Friday, 22 January 2016

Guest Speaker: Civil Rights Talk


Hear the story about the murder of Emmett Till, a young black boy killed in fifties America and the start of the civil rights movementThe speaker is Devery Anderson, who has written a book: Emmett Till: the murder that shocked the world and propelled the civil rights movement.


The kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till is famous as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was visiting family in a small town in Mississippi during the summer of 1955. Likely showing off to friends, Emmett allegedly whistled at a white woman. Three days later his brutally beaten body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River. The extreme violence of the crime put a national spotlight on the Jim Crow ways of the South, and many Americans-Black and white-were further outraged at the speedy trial of the white murderers.  Although the two white men were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, they later bragged publicly about the crime. It was a galvanizing moment for Black leaders and ordinary citizens, including such activists as Rosa Parks.

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