BLACK YOUTH
&
CIVIL RIGHTS
G'day folks,
The Civil Rights Movement drew many young people into a
maelstrom of meetings, marches, imprisonment, and in some cases, death. Some
were willing, active participants who took action for a cause they believed in.
Others were unsuspecting victims of an oppressive, racist culture that was
determined to perpetuate a white supremacist society.
EMMETT
TILL
In
the summer of 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till had just finished the
seventh grade in Chicago. He had convinced his mother, Mamie, to forgo a
planned family vacation and allow him to visit his great-uncle, Moses Wright,
in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Mamie knew Emmett to be a responsible
child, but also high spirited and at times, a prankster. Before he left, Mamie
counseled Emmett to be polite and not provoke the white people. She gave him a
ring that had belonged to his deceased father, Louis Till.
Tallahatchie
County in 1955 was economically and cultural depressed area of northern
Mississippi. Most of the population had only a grade school education.
Two-thirds were African American, working as sharecroppers and subjugated by
whites in every way. The 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board
of Education of Topeka Kansas, which outlawed segregation in public schools,
was viewed as a death knell by most whites in the Deep South and Mississippi in
particular. Many feared mixing of the races would encourage African Americans
to step out of “their place” and threaten the social order. One state newspaper
boldly declared, “Mississippi cannot and will not try to abide by such a
decision.”
Emmett
Till arrived at his great-uncle Moses farm house on August 21, 1955. He spent
most of his days working in the cotton fields and his evenings with his
cousins. He wasn’t conditioned, as they were, to address white people as “sir’
or “ma’am.” He boasted about his white friends in Chicago and a photo of a
white girl he kept in his wallet whom he called his girlfriend. On the evening
of August 24, Till and some cousins traveled to Money, a small junction near
his great-uncle’s house. They gathered at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market
owned and operated by a white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant. Roy was away on
business, and 21-year-old Carolyn was minding the store. What happened next has
been in dispute ever since.
Emmett Till either
began to brag about his white girlfriend or someone dared him to go into the
store and ask Carolyn Bryant for date. As he entered the store, his cousins
looked in from the window. Some witnesses said he walked up to Carolyn, said
something and touched or held her hand or arm. Others say he didn’t. Till
either calmly left the store or was dragged out by one of his cousins. On the
way to the truck, he allegedly yelled “Bye, baby” to Carolyn and either
whistled loudly at her or, as his mother later explained he often did, whistled
as he tried to overcome his stutter. In any event, the teenagers sped off
before Carolyn could get her gun, which she kept under the seat of her
car.
Carolyn
chose not to tell Roy of the encounter with Till after he returned home, but he
found out through local gossip and became enraged. In the early morning hours
of August 28, Bryant and his half-brother John Milam stormed into Moses Wight’s
house, pulled Till out of bed, and dragged him to an awaiting pickup truck.
Wright and his wife fruitlessly pleaded with the men as they drove off into the
night.
Three
days later, Emmet Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River,
mutilated beyond recognition. Moses Wright only knew it was his nephew because
of the ring he was wearing. Authorities wanted to quickly bury the body, but
his mother, Mamie insisted it be sent back to Chicago. After seeing her son’s
remains, she decided to have an open-casket funeral so the world could see what
had happened. Thousands of mourners filed passed the casket and several African
American publications printed graphic photos of Till’s body.
By
the time of the trial, Emmett Till’s murder had become a source of outrage
throughout the country and in Tallahatchie County. Roy Bryant and John Milam
were charged with kidnapping and murder. Among the many witnesses called during
the five-day trial was Moses Wright who bravely testified that Bryant and Milan
kidnapped Till. It took the all-white, all-male jury only an hour to acquit
Bryant and Milam.
After
the verdict, protest rallies took place in major U.S. cities and even press in
Europe covered the trial and after events. The Bryant’s store eventually went
out of business, as 90 percent of their clientele was African American.
Desperate for money, Bryant and Milam agreed to an interview by LOOK magazine where they
gave detailed confessions about killing Till, secure from further prosecution
because of double jeopardy.
Emmett
Till’s murder brought light to the brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the
South and galvanized an emerging civil rights movement. Two years after Emmett
Till’s murder, nine brave African American high school students would break
segregation tradition and enter a white-only high school.
Three years after
that, a very brave seven-year-old African American girl would enroll in an
all-white grade school and four African American college students would integrate
lunch counters and start integration movement that would sweep the country. In
1963, two more events in Birmingham, Alabama—a police attack on thousands of
children and the bombing of an African American church, killing four young
girls—would stir the conscience of a nation to finally enact civil rights
legislation into law.
LITTLE ROCK 9 –
1957
The
landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education set in
motion the racial integration of the nation’s schools. Resistance was wide spread
across the country and in 1955 the Court issued a second opinion (sometimes
known as “Brown II”) ordering school districts to integrate “with all
deliberate speed.” In response to the Brown decisions and pressure from the
NAACP, the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board adopted a plan for gradual
integration, beginning with Little Rock Central High School.
In
the summer of 1957, Daisy Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP,
recruited nine high school students who she believed possessed the strength and
determination to face the resistance to integration. They were Minnijean Brown,
Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray,
Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls. In the months prior to
the start of the school year, the students participated in intensive counseling
sessions on what to expect and how to respond.
Two
days before school opened, on September 2, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus
ordered the National Guard to bar African American students from entry to the
state’s schools, stating it was “for their own protection.” The next day,
federal court judge Richard Davies issued a counter-ruling that desegregation
would proceed.
As the nine African American students attempted to enter
the school on September 4, a crowd of angry white students and adults, and the
National Guard, were there to meet them. As the students walked toward the
front door, the white protesters drew closer, screaming racial epithets and
spitting on them. Ultimately the Guard prevented the students from entering the
school.
In the days that
followed, the Little Rock school board condemned the governor’s National Guard
deployment and President Dwight Eisenhower tried
to persuade Governor Faubus not to defy the Court’s ruling. On September 20,
Judge Davies ordered the National Guard removed from the school and the Little
Rock Police Department took over to maintain order. Three days later, the
police attempted to escort the students to school but were met by an angry mob
of 1,000 white protesters. Little Rock mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann, asked
President Eisenhower to send federal troops to enforce integration and on
September 24, President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division to
Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000 member of the Arkansas National
Guard, taking authority away from Governor Faubus.
The next day, the Army
troops escorted the students to their first day of class.
Legal challenges and protests to integration continued and
the 101st Airborne Division stayed at the school the entire year. The nine
African American students faced verbal and physical abuse. Melba Pattillo had
acid thrown in her face and Gloria Ray was thrown down a flight of stairs. In
May, 1958, senior Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate
from Central High School. The next year, Little Rock Central High School was
closed after local citizens rejected by a 3-1 margin a petition to officially
integrate the school. The school reopened in 1959 and the remaining Little Rock
Nine students went on to graduate and have distinguished careers in government,
the military, and the media. In 1999, President Bill Clinton recognized
the nine for their significant role in civil rights history, awarding each the
Congressional Gold Medal and in 2009, all nine were invited to President Barack Obama’s first
inauguration.
THE GREENSBORO FOUR, 1960
Despite the Brown v. Board of Education
decision, desegregation in the South came slowly and painfully and young
African Americans were keenly aware of the hypocrisy. In 1960, four African
American college students–Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and
Joseph McNeil–were attending the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
College. They had become close friends, spending evenings discussing current
events and their place as African Americans in a “separate but equal” society.
They had been influenced by the non-violent protest techniques of India’s Mohandas Gandhi as well as the early Freedom Rides in the Deep
South, organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). They all four had
been shaken by the 1955 murder of Emmett Till.
Though
all four students recognized that some strides had been made in desegregating
the South, integration was not universal. Most businesses were privately owned
and thus not subject to federal laws that banned segregation. When one of the
students had been denied service at a lunch counter, all four of them carefully
devised a plan to take action and encourage change.
Wearing their best clothes, all four students
walked into the F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina on February
1, 1960. After purchasing some merchandise, they sat at the whites-only lunch
counter and requested service which they were denied. They politely requested
service and again were denied, this time by the store’s manager who told them
to leave. Again, they refused. By this time, the police had arrived as did the
media. Unable to take any action because there was no provocation, the police
could not make an arrest. Customers in the store were dumbfounded at the
situation, but did nothing. The four students stayed at the counter, unserved,
until the store closed. They would be back.
By
February 5, hundreds of students had joined the sit-in at Woolworth’s
paralyzing the lunch counter business. Intense media coverage on television and
newspapers showed many of the protesters stoically facing abuse and threats by
white customers. The sit-ins sparked a nationwide movement on college campuses
and cities bringing attention to the struggle for civil rights. By the end of
1960, many restaurants, lunch counters, and privately-owned businesses had
desegregated their facilities without any court action or legislation. The
sit-ins proved to be one of the most effective protests of the Civil Rights
Movement.
Clancy's comment: Good for them!
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