Emmett Till Quotes

• I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till.

  Mamie Till

  Thinking, Needed, Happened

  209 Copy quote

• I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back. My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a stereotype. I paid the same fare as others, and I felt violated. I was not going back.

  Rosa Parks

  Hurt, Lynching, Feet

  80 Copy quote

• I thought of Emmett Till, and when the bus driver ordered me to move to the back, I just couldn’t move.

  Rosa Parks

  Moving, Bus, Drivers

  69 Copy quote

• Emmett Till and I were about the same age. A week after he was murdered... I stood on a 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... I couldn't get Emmett Till out of my mind, until one evening I thought of a way to get back at white people for his death.

  Muhammad Ali

  Eye, Boys, White

  24 Copy quote

• And the fact that Emmett Till, a young black man, could be found floating down the river in Mississippi, as, indeed, many had been done over the years, this set in concrete the determination of people to move forward.

  Fred Shuttlesworth

  Determination, Moving, Men

  "Eyes on the Prize" Interview, repository.wustl.edu. November 7, 1985.

  16 Copy quote

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• I think the picture in Jet magazine showing Emmett Till's mutilation was probably the greatest media product in the last forty or fifty years because that picture stimulated a lot of interest and anger on the part of blacks all over the country.

  Charles Diggs

  Country, Thinking, Lynching

  15 Copy quote

• We have two boys. After George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, we had to explain to our older son, who was 12 at the time, how that could happen. Instead of hugging and consoling him, my husband pulled out a documentary about Emmett Till and showed it to him and started to talk about how the justice system works in this country - and how it often doesn't. From that conversation, our son wrote a short story about Trayvon Martin going to heaven to meet Emmett Till.

  Gina Prince-Bythewood

  Country, Husband, Son

  Source: www.mtv.com

  15 Copy quote

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• In talking about the [Emmett Till murder trial], you have to repeat the atmosphere. This is Mississippi in 1955, with a long history of intimidation of witnesses and fear on the part of blacks to testify, in racial situations in particular. For someone like Mose Wright and others to testify against white defendants in a situation like this was historic.

  Charles Diggs

  Talking, White, Long

  11 Copy quote