Mississippi Murder and Mayhem

The state of Mississippi has a history that has been harsh at times and full of racial discrimination. As far back as slavery and beyond, Mississippi has kept some of its old roots of racism and segregation. These beliefs played a major role in the murders of Emmett Till, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and more recently James Craig Anderson.

Born on July 25, 1941, Emmett Till would dramatically change the face of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi at the tender age of 14. Till who went by the name Bobo, grew up in a flourishing, middle-class black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. It was a neighborhood full of black owned businesses and one where a young black boy like Emmett could roam freely without risk of harm. It was a world away from the world of Mississippi that his great uncle, Moses Wright told him about on Wright’s visit to Chicago in August 1955. Like any young man who’d only known one place his whole life, Emmett wanted to see life outside his regular haunts. He begged his mother to let him go with Wright when Wright returned to Mississippi. His mother warned Emmett that things were a bit different down South and Till should mind his manners and know his place.

Emmett arrived in Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955. Within four days he would be dead, the victim of childhood youth and innocence and the cruel racist world of Mississippi. He and a group of teenagers had entered a white owned store. Emmett allegedly whistled at Mrs. Bryant, a young white woman who was the owner’s wife. Mr. Bryant was away at the time, but was told the story when he returned. On August 28, 1955, Mr. Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Emmett from Wright’s home in the middle of the night...

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...ite power”. Anderson was beaten and then run over and killed. Unlike most of the other racially motivated killings in Mississippi history, many of the events surrounding Anderson’s murder were caught on the video surveillance tapes of the parking lot that night. Predictably the nation and Mississippi itself was shocked by another racially charged murder so long after the Civil Rights Movement.

Mississippi has a long history of racially motivated murder and mayhem long directed at black people and the white people who help them. There have been many blacks and some whites caught in the crossfire of racism and segregation in Mississippi most notably, Emmett Till, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and more recently James Craig Anderson. All paid the ultimate price in the racially charged environment of Mississippi with the cards stacked against them.