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Scott Watson
Mrs. Koch
English Honors 2
February 15, 2012
Innocence Lost
Under two and a half centuries ago, The Declaration of Independence was written so that it could be used as the philosophies of a new prototype country, one based completely on democracy and personal freedoms. The first of it’s kind, America was meant to be a place free of all oppression. However, although America is thought as having humble beginnings, in reality, the opposite is true. Although the Declaration of Independence values freedom, the original founders of America completely ignored what it truly wished to convey, the belief that all people deserved life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They did this through slavery, the practice of which completely undermined anything the Declaration of independence wished to complete. But through the efforts of abolitionists and those who wished to truly uphold the philosophies that America was founded on, in 1865 slavery was officially abolished. Although a major step towards total citizenship for African Americans, many people wished to heed the progress that was being made. These racists did anything in their power to scare, terrorize, and manipulate African Americans into doing what they wanted. The level of how deep racism’s roots are in America’s history is conveyed when one observes major cases in the Civil Rights movement’s past. Biased juries, racist judges, and lack of justice ran rampant in America’s courts. This often resulted in that guilty whites would consistently be found not guilty if the actions were performed on an African American, or the opposite, Blacks would be found guilty for crimes they didn’t commit. The Emmett Till case was a major example of the former, while both the Scottsboro and the Tom Robinson trials were major examples of the latter.
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On the 28th of August, the mutilated body of a fourteen-year-old black boy was found on the shore of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. The grotesquely disfigured body was that of Emmett Louis Till, a boy from Chicago visiting his grandpa for the summer. One day while with his friends, Emmett walked into the market store of Carolyn Bryant to buy some bubble gum. While he was leaving, Emmett allegedly whistled at her. The belief that a black man was forbidden any contact with a white woman was an integral belief within racism in the south, a belief that was also held with Bob Bryant, Carolyn’s husband. Once informed of Emmett’s actions, he and his brother Jesse kidnapped Emmett five days later and murdered him, dumping his body into the river. Bob Bryant’s motivation lied solely in the fact that he felt that Emmett had disrespected his wife; Bob’s racist beliefs fueled him to commit the horrible murder of Emmett, dragging his brother along the way to take part in the deed.