THE EMMETT TILL DISASTER

BY KENYATUS HARRIS

Emmett Till was a 14 Year old black boy. He was a native of Chicago. He always went to Mississippi in the summer. His mother Mamie Till told him to respect white people in Mississippi, but he never learned the rules of Mississippi. In Mississippi you couldn't go to white schools like in Chicago or have a white girl friend or talk to a white girl and it didn't matter how old the white person was you had to tell them yes "ma'am" and yes "sir." It was worse down here than in the north. That meant you couldn't talk to a white woman or go to only white places.

Then one day he went to Mississippi to stay with his uncle. He showed some boys a picture of a white girl and the boys said "I bet you wonít talk to that the white girl clerk." He went in the store and bought some candy and when he was walking out he said "bye baby" and walked out. That weekend her husband Roy Bryant and half brother killed Emmett Till brutally. So Mamie Till decided to have an open casket so the whole world could see what they did to her son and show how bad segregation was in Mississippi . Mamie Till and the NAACP tried to convict the two white men but in one hour they were found not guilty. The disaster of Emmett Till was in the black magazine called Jet Magazine so it was all over the world. In the book I read called Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody was terrified by the lynching. It was always in her head and Anne couldn't forget it. She tried to make her life busy so she could forget it but Anne couldn't, so she went to stay with her aunt near Centreville MS, but I can't tell you the whole story.  Read it. It is a good story.