American Decades
The Emmett Till Case
Chilling Circumstances.
The circumstances surrounding the death of Emmett Till provide chilling insight into the racism that dominated the South in the 1950s. Till was a fourteen-year-old Chicago native visiting relatives in Mississippi. While out with his cousins and friends on the night of 24 August 1955, he allegedly accosted a white woman in the grocery store owned by her husband. Accounts vary as to what Till actually said or did. According to the woman Till grabbed her and made lewd remarks. Some witnesses claimed that he only whistled at her. Still others asserted that he made no advances at all, that he whistled habitually to control a speech defect.
BATHED IN THE SPIRIT
The following account of a murderer's spiritual redemption is from Life magazine, 3 April 1950:
"In Charleston, West Virginia, one night last July two men who had been drinking heavily all day...
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1950's Law and Justice
- Overview
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Topics in the News
- The Brink's Robbery
- Brown V. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas
- The Emmett Till Case
- The First Amendment in the 1950s
- J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI
- Juvenile Delinquency
- The Kefauver Committee and Organized Crime
- The McClellan Committee and Labor Racketeering
- Prison Life in the 1950s
- Red Monday
- The Supreme Court of the 1950s
- The Ten Most Wanted
- Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company V. Sawyer
- Headline Makers
- People in the News
- Deaths
- Publications
- Important Events in Law and Justice, 1950–1959
