re harassed and still treated separately and certainly not equally. The Supreme Court had asked for desegregation to proceed with all deliberate speed. This gradual approach caused severe problems for many black students. The south saw several school districts close down rather than submit to the courts decision. Also, black students were still not being admitted to universities in the south on a regular basis. It would take years before the integration would become a widespread reality in the southern states.In 1955, a young boy named Emmett Till inadvertently, in the eyes of many, began the civil rights movement for much of the nation. Till, a fourteen year-old black boy from Chicago, was murdered by two white men, while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. The story is that Till was dared by some friends to go in and talk to a white female who was working in a store. He did so and later on, when her husband found out, he and a mob of people took Emmett from his relatives home. The men took him to a river, stripped him naked, beat him, gouged out his eye and shot him in the head. They made him carry a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan and threw him in the river. When his corpse was recovered, it was so badly mangled that the only way Emmett Till was identified was by a ring with his initial on it. A picture of Emmetts corpse was shown in a magazine and the nation was outraged. The country watched the case closely due to its brutality and due to the recent decision regarding Brown v. Board of Education. The case marked the first time in the south that two white men were tried for the murder of a black man. While this was seemingly a big step forward in the civil rights movement, it really was to no avail. Due to an all white jury, in a segregated court room, the men were found not guilty. Although they were found to be not guilty, they proved to be far from innocent. The men later admitted to the murder in all it...
