opposition to CRM

• White supremacy groups:

  Klu Klux Klan (KKK):

  • Violent and secretive org, founded after Civil war.
  • Its members believed in white supremacy.

  The KKK increased its activity after World War Two, they hated black people and opposed any form of equality with them. Some of its actions included:

  • burning crosses, marching and wearing hooded gowns to terrorise black people
  • violence against black Americans, including lynching and other aggressive actions to intimidate black people
  • scaring black people in order to prevent them from voting
• Why was the KKK so powerful?

  • One of the reasons the KKK was so powerful was because it was difficult for black people to get justice for crimes committed against them in a court of law.
  • When a case against a white person did get to court, the members of the jury were usually white.
  • They were often biased and ruled in favour of the accused white person.
  • Many police officers and judges were also part of KKK, they often turned a blind-eye towards black people or were even complicit in it, this goes against the whole principles of justice and equality that these institutions should uphold.
• Who were George Lee and Lamar Smith?

  George Lee and Lamar Smith were 2 of many black activists attacked:

  • George Lee, black voter and farmer in Mississippi, refused to give up his right to vote and was shot in his car. His death was ruled as accidental by the authorities.
  • Lamar Smith, also farmer who lived in Mississippi. He taught black people how to vote without the need to attend a polling station. He was shot outside a courthouse after voting. No one was charged with his murder despite witnesses being at the crime.
• Trial for Emmett Till's murder

  1. Bryant and Milam arrested and put on trial for the murder in September 1955

  2. Till's uncle identified Bryant and Milam as the men who had kidnapped Emmett from his house

  3. Both found not guilty by the all-white jury, who took only 67 minutes to make their decision

  4. Despite not being found guilty later paid $3500 to admit to being guilty in magazine article.
• Emmett Till's murder:

  • The next day he was kidnapped by Roy Bryant and JW Milam they beat him, shot him and threw his body in the river with a heavy weight around his neck, attached with barbed wire.
  • Body not found till 3 days later.
• Events leading to Emmett Till's murder

  1. Emmett Till visited his cousins in Mississippi, in South
  2. Dared by local boys to go into Roy Bryant's shop and talk to Bryant's wife Carolyn.
  3. Accounts say Emmett wolf-whistled at Carolyn, but she claimed he grabbed her and made inappropriate suggestions. Exactly what happened in the store is disputed to this day.
  4. Alarmed his cousins due to the violence that the Ku Klux Klan handed out to African Americans on a regular basis
• Outrage over murder in the North:

  The murder of a black boy was not unusual in Mississippi, but caused outrage in the North, from both black and white people.
• ‘M is for Mississippi and Murder’:

  • Emmett’s murder fuelled the growth of the Civil Rights movement by showing how outrage and media coverage of injustice could gain support.
  • The NAACP even produced a leaflet called ‘M is for Mississippi and Murder’.
• Emmett Till's funeral:

  • Till’s funeral held in Chicago. It drew mass media attention. One reason for this was the nature of Till’s death. Another was the fact that Bryant and Milam had been found not guilty despite witness accounts suggesting they had committed the murder.
  • Till’s mother, Mamie Till, decided to hold an open-casket funeral, so mourners could view his body and see how brutally he had been beaten. Images of his open casket were too shocking for most newspapers to print and television channels to broadcast.
  • Led to huge publicity and shock, historians say led rapid growth of CRM
• Aftermath of Emmett Till’s murder:

  • A huge national audience was made aware of the violence, discrimination and prejudice that black Americans faced. The murder and the freeing of Till’s killers had a major impact on civil rights activists.
  • Various groups began to work together, such as the NAACP and black church organisations. They openly supported the civil rights movement by protesting about Till’s case at a rally in New York City in 1955.
• The 1957 Civil Rights Act aimed to help black people to vote however, some state government officials in the South opposed progress. Judges in the South often sided against black people who used the new law to challenge discrimination
• State government opposition tactics(passive tactics)

  1. Hiding in their offices to stop black people from registering to vote

  2. Changing the rules about where their voters could live to exclude black people

  3. These actions slowed or stopped improved civil rights for black Americans