In 1955, Emmett Till was beaten and shot to death by two white men, who then threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett Till was in Mississippi visiting family when this happened. He was a 14 year Negro, who did nothing more than talk to a white woman. The trial of the two white men who killed him was only three weeks later. The jury was a completely white jury and led to the unfair verdict of not guilty. This trial was a year after segregation was outlawed, and therefore the nation was watching closely. This struck a chord through the nation, and exposed the inequality that was still occurring the South. This means that his murder was a spark and an inspiration to the civil rights movement; it was a major turning point for Negros. Since then, the nation has been able to achieve more equality, although not in all cases. For example, Jena Six was a more current social injustice. This injustice occurred at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana, which was 86 percent white. This event all started in August 2006, when a black teenager tried to sit under a shady tree that was “understood” to be a place where only whites sat. The next day, three nooses were hung on the tree, and the white teenagers who admitted to doing it only got a three day suspension. Days later, more black teenagers tried to sit under the tree in protest. The police came and gave them a lecture, telling them that they could end their life with the stroke of a pen so they better be careful. That same year in October a black boy attended an all-white party, getting beaten with no consequences to the white boys who beat him. Then it really got ugly, in December of 2006 a fight broke out on school property. Six blacks males were in that fight, along with one white male who was beaten and taken immediately to the hospital. He was taken care of and then let out while all six black teens were rounded up by police and charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. The normal penalty for fighting at Jena High School was a three day suspension. Also, they were tried as adults, as minors with an all-white jury. So as you can see through this example that all social injustices have not yet been expelled. The connections between the two are somewhat eerie, since between the time of Emmett Till and Jena Six we as a nation have dropped segregation and come closer to equality. Both trials had an all-white jury giving them slimmer chances to begin with as the whites would of course take the word of whites over blacks. It seems that in both cases, neither Emmett Till nor the Jena Six deserved what they had gotten. In Emmett’s case, death but for Jena Six, being tried as adults with second degree murder? Neither adds up. I believe as a nation we have come far from where we were in the time of Emmett Till’s death and the injustices that were displayed then, but I do feel that we can still improve, and hopefully get rid of such injustices altogether.
