The first film we watched on Thursday, which discusses the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, does not do a very good job of contextualizing this event, of explaining how Emmett Till's story affected a generation of African-Americans. Which is not to say the fact of a young black boy being killed by whites was anything unusual -- lynchings were nothing new, nor was it unusual for the killers to get away with it.
Emmett Till's story was different, though. One of the main things that made it different was Emmett Till's mother's insistence on having an open casket at the funeral. Mamie Till's choice to show her son's brutally mutilated, unrecognizable face -- pictures of which were also widely publicized -- forced the full ugliness of the violence against African-Americans into the public eye. For many young African-Americans living in the North, there was a sudden sense that, That could be me. Many Northern African-American families had only recently migrated from the South, and many young people in the North spent their summers living with relatives in the South -- just as Emmett Till had been when he was killed. Emmett Till's death became a pivotal moment in the lives of a generation of African-Americans, and spurred many of them to more active resistance against racism.
In 2003 a documentary called The Murder of Emmett Till was broadcast on PBS, the US public broadcasting station. PBS maintains an excellent website on this film which is packed with information. You can find a wealth of background and related information on the Emmett Till story, segregation in the US, and the Civil Rights Movement in general -- you can even read the transcript of the entire film, in which Mamie Till and Emmett's other relatives describe events first-hand.
As we watched the film on Thursday, many people were surprised to learn that not only did Emmett Till's killers get away with the crime, but also, just four months later, the killers made $4000 (a lot of money in 1956, especially in the rural South) by selling their confessions to Look Magazine. Also on the PBS site, you can read the original Look Magazine article, as well as letters to the editor that appeared afterward.
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