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The Death of Emmett Till

Bob Dylan

"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.

And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.

If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live

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“Traveling in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very

fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white

people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use

public facilities that white people used.”

Diane Nash, Freedom Rides

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"Every person operating a bus line in the city shall provide equal but separate accommodations for white people and negroes on his buses, by requiring the employees in charge thereof to assign passengers seats on the vehicles under their charge in such manner as to separate the white people from the negroes where there are both white and negroes on the same car; provided, however, that negro nurses having in charge white children or sick or infirm white persons, may be assigned seats among white people.”

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Primary, direct reference:

"Segregation was unfair. It was wrong, morally, religiously. As a Southerner – a white Southerner – I felt that we should do what we could to make the South better and to rid ourselves of this evil.”

~ Joan Mulholland, Activist

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raveling in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use public facilities that white people used.” ~ Diane Nash, Freedom Rides Organizer

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Secondary, direct, reference: "The Freedom Riders were remarkable, fearless Americans. They were extraordinary, ordinary people . . . young people who took the reins of history and wouldn't let go.”

~ Mark Samels, American Experience Executive Producer.

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"The Riders' dangerous passage through the bus terminals and jails of the Jim Crow South represented only one part of an extended journey for justice that stretched back to the dawn of American history and beyond. But once that passage was completed, there was renewed hope that the nation would eventually find its way to a true and inclusive democracy.”

~ Professor Raymond Arsenault

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"Traveling in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use public facilities that white people used.” ~ Diane Nash, Freedom Rides Organizer

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"The contrast could not have been sharper between the well-dressed nonviolent activists and the thugs armed with lead pies and firebombs.”

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"Travelling in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use public facilities that white people used.” ~ Diane Nash, Freedom Rides Organizer

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"You didn't know what you were going to encounter. You had night riders. You had hoodlums . . . You could be antagonised at any point in your journey.” ~ Charles Person, Freedom Rider

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If not us, then who?
If not new, then when?
Will someone else's children have to risk their lives instead of risking ours?
Freedom Rider John Lewis
"The contrast could not have been sharper between the well-dressed nonviolent activists and the thugs armed with lead pies and firebombs.” ~ Adam Strom, Facing History and Ourselves

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"I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, nor court can save it.” ~ Judge Learned Hand

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Direct Quote –

"You didn't know what you were going to encounter. You had night riders. You had hoodlums . . . You could be antagonized at any point in your journey.” ~ Charles Person, Freedom Rider

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"The Freedom Riders were remarkable, fearless Americans. They were

extraordinary, ordinary people . . . young people who took the reins of history and

wouldn't let go.”

~ Mark Samels, American Experience Executive Producer

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"Travelling in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use public facilities that white people used.”

~ Diane Nash, Freedom Rides Organiser

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"You didn't know what you were going to encounter. You had night riders. You had hoodlums . . . You could be antagonized at any point in your journey.”

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Freedom Rides

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Direct quote:

"You didn't know what you were going to encounter. You had night riders. You had hoodlums . . . You could be antagonized at any point in your journey.” ~ Charles Person, Freedom Rider

Indirect quote:

In February 1965 a group of University of Sydney students organised a bus tour of western and coastal New South Wales towns.

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"The Freedom Riders were remarkable, fearless Americans. They were extraordinary, ordinary people . . . young people who took the reins of history and wouldn't let go.”

~ Mark Samels, American Experience Executive Producer

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‘… summer of 1961 about 1000 African- American and white people took these freedom rides together, risking their own safety to desegregate interstate bus journeys.’
indirect secondary
(Pearson textbook pg116)

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"You didn't know what you were going to encounter. You had night riders. You had hoodlums . . . You could be antagonised at any point in your journey.”

"The Riders' dangerous passage through the bus terminals and jails of the Jim Crow South represented only one part of an extended journey for justice that stretched back to the dawn of American history and beyond. But once that passage was completed, there was renewed hope that the nation would eventually find its way to a true and inclusive democracy.”