Emmet Till: Crash Course Black American History #34

In 1955, a 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi. The white men who murdered him killed him for being Black. Emmett Till’s mother chose to have an open casket funeral, and show the world what had been done to her son. Despite the killers being acquitted in court, the story of Emmett Till and the jarring images of his funeral shocked the nation and were a vital catalyst in turning the civil rights movement into a nationwide phenomenon.

Clint’s book, How the Word is Passed is available now! https://bookshop.org/books/how-the-word-is-passed-a-reckoning-with-the-history-of-slavery-across-america/9780316492935

VIDEO SOURCES
Timothy B. Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (University of California Press, 2007).
Onwuachi-Willig, Angela. “The Trauma of the Routine: Lessons on Cultural Trauma from the Emmett Till Verdict.” Sociological Theory 34, no. 4 (December 2016): 335–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275116679864.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chicago-Defender
https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/emmett-Tills-death-inspired-movement
smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/emmett-Tills-casket-goes-to-the-smithsonian-144696940/#:~:text=Till’s%20murder%20became%20a%20rallying,African%20American%20History%20and%20Culture.
https://www.nypl.org/collections/articles-databases/jet-magazine
https://www.jetmag.com/news/jet-65th-anniversary/

‘Let The People See’: It Took Courage To Keep Emmett Till’s Memory Alive