Emmett Till

My general profile and major accomplishments

My name is Emmett Till, but most people knew me as "Bobo".

On July 25, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois I was born and raised as an only child. My mother was always a strong woman since my father was never around and they eventually got a divorce, but my life wasn't that bad.

• I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in a Middle Class neighborhood filled with many business owners and rather respected people.
• At the age of five, my mother told me I was struck with Polio. I made a recovery but i'll never forget it because it left me with a stutter for the rest of my life. 
• My mother was always working so I really learned how to take care of household responsibilities when I was very young, but I thank her for giving me that skill.

http://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515

Education and Profession

My education was my profession, and this is all I ever got to experience.

I went to school at the McCosh Grammar Elementary School as a kid, and man was that a good time. I wasn't exactly the most "fit" kid back then, but I didn't let that bother me. I didn't care much about what people had to say, I had made a ton of good friends and we made each other laugh and that's all that counts. 

http://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515

My Goal

• Although I was in school the whole time I was living, I know that I had a goal set out for me. My goal was to show people that racism, hatred, and violence do have an impact on many lives. My story turned out to change the way people looked at situations and I became and impact to those who never knew me. I would say that I had only one goal in life, and that was to make a difference and be a hero. 

Organizations and Memberships

At the age of only fourteen, you can't really join any major organizations or memberships. If I was to join any today, I would join any civil rights organizations that stood up for what was right. For example, the NAACP, which exposed pictures of my corps on January 24,1956 is an organization I would support mainly because of what they believe in and stand for. 

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_till_emmett_louis_1941_1955/ 

Signature Quote

I decided to chose a quote that stood out to me personally, because I could never really put into words at the age of fourteen what things were like and what really happened. This quote truly stuck out to me.

• "Emmett Till and I were about the same age. A week after he was murdered... I stood on the corner with a gang of boys, looking at pictures of him in the black newspapers and magazines. In one, he was laughing and happy. In the other, his head was swollen and bashed in, his eyes bulging out of their sockets and his mouth twisted and broken. His mother had done a bold thing. She refused to let him be buried until hundreds of thousands marched past his open casket in Chicago and looked down at his mutilated body. [I] felt a deep kinship to him when I learned he was born the same year and day I was. My father talked about it at night and dramatized the crime. I couldn't get Emmett out of my mind" Muhammad Ali, at age thirteen. 

http://www.lsrhs.net/departments/history/ShenM/Site/20th_classwork,_handouts_files/The%20impact%20of%20Emmett%20Till.pdf

August 28th, 1955

I had never felt so much pain in my entire life, this wasn't just a murder this was brutality at it's finest hour.

This was the day when I died, this is the day when I was no longer Emmett Till. I was shot above the right ear, my eye was dislodged from my socket, my back and my hips were beaten badly, and my body was weighted to the fan blade, which was fastened around my neck with barbed wire. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till#Murder