Why Hate?
... allegedly broke into the home of Mose Wright, Till’s uncle, in the middle of the night and kidnapped Till. Three days later Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River. “One eye was gouged out, and his crushed-in head had a bullet in it. The corpse was nearly unrecognizable; Mose Wright could only positively identify the body as Emmett's because it was wearing an initialed ring” (The Murder). Locals were aware of what had happened and were completely horrified. It would only be shortly when this case caught the attention of the nation. “ Emmett Till was a black boy who was murdered near my hometown when I was a boy. The trial of his murderers became a landmark in the civil rights movement” (Nordan 294). “Mamie Bradley, Emmett's mother, asked that the body be shipped back to Chicago. When it arrived, she inspected it carefully to ensure that it really was her son. Then, she insisted on an open-casket funeral, so that "all the world [could] see what they did to my son." Over four days, thousands of people saw Emmett's body” (The Murder). “At first, local whites as well as blacks were horrified by the crime. Bryant and Milam were arrested for kidnapping even before Emmett's body was found, and no local white lawyers would take their case. Newspapers and white officials reported that all "decent" people were disgusted with the murder and proclaimed that "justice would be done” (The Murder). I feel that this hate crime in particular made the nation as a whole understand the cruelty one can inflict on another person, Hate crimes in general have an impact on Ape` 3 people. The holocaust for instance, this hate crime was a form of genocide of a certain ethnic group. Although one person may have not been a Jew, it affected all who bared witness to it. In 1955 and on, this was a time era of a lot of hatred, racist and prejudice crimes occurring. The main aim was the “black man”. This time era played an important role in today’s society, as it made rights for all men equal. Events other than Emmett Till that help shape what we now call our society include Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rodney King incident. I feel that all these hate crimes’ victims happen to be black, makes a big difference of how the black people view the government and society. The fact that these hate crimes had black victims, people may tend to think that hate crimes were targeted to a certain group or race of people. What motivates a person to commit a hate crime? Can it be jealousy, insecurity of what they may have or don’t have? Or maybe it can be the simple fact that they themselves have experienced a hatred crime themselves. “The impact of the Emmett Till case on black America was even greater than that of the Brown decision. For the first time, northern blacks saw that violence against blacks in the South could affect them in the North. In Mamie Bradley's words, "Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, `That's their business, not mine.' Now I know how wrong. I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all." Blacks, in the...