preview

Emmett Till Essay

Decent Essays

The photo of the mutilated body of Emmett Till still remains in my memory as if I just seen it yesterday. Emmett till was a fourteen year old boy from Chicago, Illinois who was unlawfully executed for false accusations by a white woman in 1955. A group of white men abducted Emmett Till and his body was discovered three day later in the Tallahatchie River. This case shined a light on the harsh truths of racism within America and caused an outcry from several minority groups across America. This even caught the attention of Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén; he wrote a very power poem called Elegy of Emmett Till in response to this case. In Nicolás Guillén’s Elegy of Emmett Till, He uses a nature analogy to describe Emmett Till. He describes Emmett Till as “small flower of your banks, not yet a root of your trees”. He uses this analogy to show that Emmett Till was a young child. Emmett Till was still a pure innocent child trying to figure out his future which was unfortunately cut short due to the radical, racist time period. The woman who made false allegations against him, Carolyn Bryant, recently admits that she lied about the whole story. Not only did her false allegations get an innocent child killed, but it also killed …show more content…

The Ku Klux Klan lynched many African Americans during this time, “silent trees, from which hang already ripe screams, burning crosses threatening”. Unfortunately, Black men were the ideal target of being lynched; trees became fertile and fruitful with bodies of Black American men. The author used graphic language to describe the deaths of Black American men, “Black submitting himself, enveloped in smoke the belly falling out, the intestines moist, the sex organ persecuted”. Unfortunately black men are a double negative in American society, not only are they black, but they are expected to carry the weight of a world because they are

Get Access