RACISM
Emmett Louis Till (1941-1955)
“
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both
impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it
is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.
It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the
opponent rather than win his understanding; it
seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral
because it thrives on hatred rather than love.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1955
Rosa Parks (1913-2005)
”
On December 1st, Rosa Parks was arrested because of her
refusal to give up her bus seat at the front of the “colored
section” to a white passenger. This seemingly
small act sparked an 11-month mass protest
known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On
December 21, 1956, the Supreme Court voted
to ban segregation on city public transit
vehicles.
1963
Four young girls were attending Sunday School at
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham,
Alabama when they were killed due to a racially
motivated bombing. The blast outraged the nation
and added four young faces to the importance of
the civil rights movement.
1954
14 year old Emmett Till was visiting family in Mississippi
when he allegedly whistled at a white woman. In response,
he was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot and dumped in a
river. Two white males were arrested for the murder, but
acquitted by an all-white jury. The two later boasted in a
magazine interview about committing the murder.
Emmett’s mother wanted people to see how badly the
boy's body had been disfigured in the incident, so she
chose to leave his coffin open at the funeral service. Press
photographers took pictures and circulated them around
the country, drawing intense reaction by the public. Some
reports indicate that up to 50,000 people filed through the
funeral home to view the body. The photograph of Emmett
Till's mutilated corpse energized the emerging civil rights
movement when they appeared in Jet Magazine.
1963
Led by Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor,
police in Birmingham, Alabama used fire hoses and police
dogs on black demonstrators at peaceful civil rights protests.
These images of brutality, which have been televised and
published widely, have been
instrumental in gaining
sympathy for the civil rights
movement in the U.S. and
around the world.
Addie Mae Collins (1949-1963), Denise McNair (1951-1963),
Carole Robertson (1949-1963), and Cynthia Wesley (1949-1963)
1968
1964
Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed
on April 4th as he stands on the
balcony of his hotel room. James Earl
Ray was convicted of his murder and
sentenced to 99 years in prison.
On July 2nd, President Lyndon Johnson signed
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping
civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction,
the act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based
on race, color,
religion or national
origin. The law also
provides the
federal government
with the powers to
enforce
desegregation.
A KKK march in downtown Denver, Colorado
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
Aftermath of the
Birmingham Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church bombing
The KKK burning a cross in Alabama