Emmett Till's Influence On The Civil Rights Movement

The death of Emmett Till was a spark that fueled the Civil Rights Movement. Mamie Till-Mobley is the author of Death of Innocence a book documenting the life, death, and legacy of Emmett Till. But Mamie was more than just an author who, like many, was inspired by Emmett; she was a courageous woman who knew Emmett long before he became a symbol of Civil Rights. She was Emmett’s mother, who took care of him as a child, would refuse to have a closed casket funeral for her brutally murdered son and held the strength inside her to inspire many main players in the Civil Rights Movement to stand up and fight for their rights.
Mamie was utterly committed to Emmett, her little Bo. t do much. Emmett became extremely sick when he was five, and the family
The State of Mississippi had tried every way to make sure that no one saw Emmett’s mangled body. Every person involved in bringing Emmett back from Mississippi signed papers to make sure that the box containing his body was not opened. But Mamie refused to even consider not opening the box saying, “you see, I didn’t sign any papers…and I dare them to sue me” (Till-Mobley 133) When she opened the box she saw the barely recognizable face of her only child. She saw reflected in his face the horrific reality of racism in 1950’s United States. Mamie knew that she couldn’t let the world be blind to what she had seen. There was more to her decision to hold an open-casket funeral for Emmett than just wanting him to be seen; she wanted “to help people recognize the horrible problems [African-Americans] were facing in the South” (Till-Mobley 139). And she did just that. Mamie gave her son an open casket funeral. Many of the people were white. The nation cried out that something was dreadfully wrong with their society. People started realizing that racism was a problem; it was something that happened thousands of times by thousands of people every day. And it was something that had to be