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  • 10 months ago
He was only 14 when he was brutally lynched in the Jim Crow South. His mother chose to hold an open casket funeral to expose the horror of his murder. This is the story of Emmett Till, a lasting symbol in the fight for racial justice.
Transcript
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00:33Emmett was a prankster. Loved jokes.
00:35Liked to make people laugh.
00:37Always wanted to do something to draw attention.
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00:46When he was little,
00:48we that knew the motories of the South,
00:51we made a beeline for the car.
00:53This boy has grossly violated the Southern motories.
00:58When he saw that we were afraid,
01:00then he became afraid.
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01:30Because he whistled, he was killed.
01:33He was shot in the head,
01:35thrown in the Tallahassee River.
01:38We cried.
01:40Our hearts were broken.
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02:02The mother demanded that the casket remain open.
02:06In essence, really ripping the lid off of this
02:10saying, you as a country have to come to grips
02:13with what happened to my son.
02:15And I think that, her courage,
02:18the pain she felt,
02:20but the courage of keeping that casket open
02:23really inspired people to say, enough's enough.
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02:56He lost his life, but a lot of good came.
02:59There was his mother's saying,
03:01I hope you didn't die in vain.
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03:26She said, you tell these stories over and over
03:30until they seem true,
03:33but that part's not true.
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04:03His mother insisted on an open casket.
04:07This was the thing that sent shockwaves across this country,
04:11causing people to rethink what was happening in the South.
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04:19I think the more we learn about what happened to Emmett Till,
04:23it tells us a lot about the criminal justice system,
04:26it tells us a lot about fairness.
04:28It also should give us a path to understand,
04:31here's what we need to do as a country
04:34to make sure these kind of things don't happen.
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