The significance of the Emmett Till case, 1955

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  • Created by: Joe Dodd
  • Created on: 17-01-18 11:39
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  • The significance of the Emmett Till case, 1955
    • The brutality of the act
      • The most disproportionate of outcomes.
      • A 14 year old boy brutally attacked and murdered, after being kidnapped, for apparently saying, "Bye, baby" to a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a grocery story in Money, Mississippi.
      • His mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral, to broadcast to the world Till's mutilated face - "I wanted the world to see."
        • Due to the insistence of an open-casket funeral, Till's face was shown worldwide in newspapers and magazines - Had a monumental visual impact.
    • Press/Media
      • The U.S., particularly in the postwar period, was particularly conscious and proud of its international image.
      • Comparable to the video of the shooting of Michael Brown (Ferguson, Missouri, 2014)
      • The Chicago Defender was the first newspaper to cover the case.
      • Due to the insistence of an open-casket funeral, Till's face was shown worldwide in newspapers and magazines - Had a monumental visual impact.
      • Proved to unaware northerners the brutality of racism that still existed in the South.
      • The case was largely covered by white news outlets - Highlighted to a previously unaware, or unashamed, readership the profound significance of this case.
    • Bryant and Milam's confession.
      • The confession exposes the case of having a legitimate, non-racist court system in the South.
      • The confession almost does the BFM's job for them.
      • The two were disgraced in Money; nobody wanted anything to do with them - "A silence in the white community."
      • The confession gives ammunition to the Black Freedom Movement to continue to fight and use incidents such as these as an example to campaign.
    • The court/ courtroom/ jury
      • Till's uncle and two other family members testified in court as witnesses - A huge decision, very uncommon, and potentially very dangerous.
      • People in the courthouse were armed, meaning there was a continuous threat of violence.
      • There would have been no real case without Till's family taking it to court.
      • The jury were drinking beer - a relaxed, "sham courtroom," and it did not feel as though  the case is being taken seriously enough - The jury takes just one hour to deliberate.

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