But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. — Abraham Lincoln –

Martin Luther King, Jr. incorporated the phrase into his 1963 speech, I have a dream:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! — Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. –

Do to the media attention, death threats and her activism, Rosa lost her job at a department store. She left Alabama for Detroit in 1957. She began working at Michigan state democrat Conyers remembers Parks. Monday, he gave these remarks to CNN by telephone Monday. Regarding the contribution Rosa made not just to America but to the world.

“I think that she as a mother of the new civil rights movement has left an impact not just on a nation, but on the world. She was a real apostle of the nonviolent movement.” He remembers her as being sophisticated and soft spoken. Parks was the co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. She was adamant about advocating for young people. She understood the importance of good, affordable education and getting them registered to vote on the very issues that affect them.

She continued to remain active in lecturing, presenting and accepting awards well into her 80′s. She received the presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. In 1999, she received the Congressional Gold medal. At the ceremony, she stated, “This medal is encouragement to all of us to continue until all have rights.”

Rosa Parks will be sorely missed but never forgotten as a woman who inspired a nation. If you wish to learn more about this inspirational woman please see www.RosaParks.org and 2002 Oscar nominated documentary “Mighty Times: The legacy of Rosa Parks.”

There were several people pouring out of the church covered in blood and glass. The blast was so strong that it crushed two cars parked nearby More than 2000 ascended unto the site after hearing the blast 20 other individuals were taken to the hospital , many others had minor cuts and bruises. Mayor Albert Boutwell asked help from the governor. Mayor Boutwell and police Chief Jamie Moore requested help from the state with a telegram. President Kennedy was informed of the incident while yachting near Newport, R.I. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent FBI agents and Bomb experts to the site.

Chief civil rights troubleshooter, Burke Marshal was sent to assist. The reverend martin Luther king, JR flew to Birmingham after contacting President Kennedy. He said, that unless “immediate Federal steps are taken” there will be “in Birmingham and Alabama the worst racial holocaust this Nation has ever seen” Hundreds of people rioted in the streets. Police officers arrested several people for throwing stones at cars. The police shot two young African American boys. One was a sixteen year old male, Johnny Robinson, who police say was stoning cars and refused to halt. The other 13 year old boy, Virgil ware was shot around the same time. No details as to the reasoning were given.

After the Bomb experts and police groomed and investigated the site, it was said that 15 or more sticks of dynamite was used. The dynamite was said to have been planted in a basement which was not occupied at the time. However the wall blew out toward a room filled with children. Many witnesses said a suspicious car drove by and sped away before the bomb exploded. Two men were questions and released. Witnesses who saw the car said that they could not distinguish what color the passengers in the car were. The church bombing was the 4th bombing in a month’s time. The school desegregation seemed to be influencing this rash of bombings as this was the 3rd bombing since the escalation of protests against desegregation.

As darkness closed over the city hours later, shots crackled sporadically in the Negro sections. Stones smashed into cars driven by whites.

Five Fires Reported – Police reported at least five fires in Negro business establishments tonight. A official said some are being set, including one at a mop factory touched off by gasoline thrown on the building. The fires were brought under control and there were no injuries. Meanwhile, NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins wired President Kennedy that unless the Federal Government offers more than “picayune and piecemeal aid against this type of bestiality” Negroes will “employ such methods as our desperation may dictate in defense of the lives of our people.”

Reinforced police units patrolled the city and 500 battle-dressed National Guardsmen stood by at an armory. City police shot a 16-year-old Negro to death when he refused to heed their commands to halt after they caught him stoning cars. A 13-year-old Negro boy was shot and killed as he rode his bicycle in a suburban area north of the city.

Police Battle Crowd – Downtown streets were deserted after dark and police urged white and Negro parents to keep their children off the streets.
Thousands of hysterical Negroes poured into the area around the church this morning and police fought for two hours, firing rifles into the air to control them.

When the crowd broke up, scattered shootings and stonings erupted through the city during the afternoon and tonight.
The Negro youth killed by police was Johnny Robinson, 16. They said he fled down an alley when they caught him stoning cars. They shot him when he refused to halt.

The 13-year-old boy killed outside the city was Virgil Ware. He was shot at about the same time as Robinson. Shortly after the bombing police broke up a rally of white students protesting the desegregation of three Birmingham schools last week. A motorcade of militant adult segregationists apparently en route to the student rally was disbanded.

Police patrols, augmented by 300 State troopers sent into the city by Gov. George C. Wallace, quickly broke up all gatherings of white and Negroes. Wallace sent the troopers and ordered 500 National Guardsmen to stand by at Birmingham armories.

King arrived in the city tonight and went into a conference with Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader in the civil rights fight in Birmingham. The City Council held an emergency meeting to discuss safety measures for the city, but rejected proposals for a curfew. Dozens of persons were injured when the bomb went off in the church, which held 400 Negroes at the time, including 80 children. It was Young Day at the church.

A few hours later, police picked up two white men, questioned them about the bombing and released them. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wired President Kennedy from Atlanta that he was going to Birmingham to plead with Negroes to “remain non-violent.” But he said that unless “immediate Federal steps are taken” there will be “in Birmingham and Alabama the worst racial holocaust this Nation has ever seen.”

Dozens of survivors, their faces dripping blood from the glass that flew out of the church’s stained glass windows, staggered around the building in a cloud of white dust raised by the explosion. The blast crushed two nearby cars like toys and blew out windows blocks away.

Negroes stoned cars in other sections of Birmingham and police exchanged shots with a Negro firing wild shotgun blasts two blocks from the church. It took officers two hours to disperse the screaming, surging crowd of 2,000 Negroes who ran to the church at the sound of the blast. At least 20 persons were hurt badly enough by the blast to be treated at hospitals. Many more, cut and bruised by flying debris, were treated privately. (The Associated Press reported that among the injured in subsequent shooting were a white man injured by a Negro. Another white man was wounded by a Negro who attempted to rob him, according to police.)

Mayor Albert Boutwell, tears streaming down his cheeks, announced the city had asked for help. “It is a tragic event,” Boutwell said. “It is just sickening that a few individuals could commit such a horrible atrocity. The occurrence of such a thing has so gravely concerned the public…” His voice broke and he could not go on.

Boutwell and Police Chief Jamie Moore requested the State assistance in a telegram to Wallace. “While the situation appears to be well under control of federal law enforcement officers at this time, the possibility of further trouble exists,” Boutwell and Moore said in their telegram. President Kennedy, yachting off Newport, R.I., was notified by radio-telephone and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered his chief civil rights troubleshooter, Burke Marshall, to Birmingham. At least 25 FBI agents, including bomb experts from Washington, were being rushed in. City Police Inspector W.J. Haley said as many as 15 sticks of dynamite must have been used.

“We have talked to witnesses who say they saw a car drive by and then speed away just before the bomb hit,” he said. In Montgomery, Wallace said he had a similar report and said the descriptions of the car’s occupants did not make clear their race. But he served notice “on those responsible that every law enforcement agency of this State will be used to apprehend them.”

The bombing was the 21st in Birmingham in eight years, and the first to kill. None of the bombings have been solved. As police struggled to hold back the crowd, the blasted church’s pastor, the Rev. John H. Cross, grabbed a megaphone and walked back and forth, telling the crowd: “The police are doing everything they can. Please go home.” “The Lord is our shepherd,” he sobbed. “We shall not want.” The only stained glass window in the church that remained in its frame showed Christ leading a group of little children. The face of Christ was blown out.

After the police dispersed the hysterical crowds, workmen with pickaxes went into the wrecked basement of the church. Parts of brightly painted children’s furniture were strewn about in one Sunday School room, and blood stained the floors. Chunks of concrete the size of footballs littered the basement. The bomb apparently went off in an unoccupied basement room and blew down the wall, sending stone and debris flying like shrapnel into a room where children were assembling for closing prayers following Sunday School. Bibles and song books lay shredded and scattered through the church.

In the main sanctuary upstairs, which holds about 500 persons, the pulpit and Bible were covered with pieces of stained glass. One of the dead girls was decapitated. The coroner’s office identified the dead as Denise McNair, 11; Carol Robertson, 14; Cynthia Wesley, 14, and Addie Mae Collins, 10.

As the crowd came outside watched the victims being carried out, one youth broke away and tried to touch one of the blanket-covered forms. “This is my sister,” he cried. “My God, she’s dead.” Police took the hysterical boy away.
Mamie Grier, superintendent of the Sunday School, said when the bomb went off “people began screaming, almost stampeding” to get outside. The wounded walked around in a daze, she said.

One of the injured taken to a hospital was a white man. Many others cut by flying glass and other debris were not treated at hospitals. Fourth in Four Weeks It was the fourth bombing in four weeks in Birmingham, and the third since the current school desegregation crisis came to a boil Sept. 4.

Desegregation of schools in Birmingham, Mobile, and Tuskegee was finally brought about last Wednesday when President Kennedy federalized the National Guard. Some of the Guardsmen in Birmingham are still under Federal orders. Wallace said the ones he alerted today were units of the Guard “not now federalized.” The City of Birmingham has offered a $52,000 reward for the arrest of the bombers, and Wallace today offered another $5,000.
Dr. King Berates Wallace – But Dr. King wired Wallace that “the blood of four little children … is on your hands. Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder.”

1996 The Washington Post Company

In 1968, America was feeling the heat of civil unrest, much of which was a reaction to the civil rights movement. The idea of blacks being brought into racial parity with whites sent shockwaves through the corridors of power and through society at large.

At the eye of this hurricane of turmoil was a man named Martin Luther King, Jr., who preached non-violent civil disobedience as a means of opening the way for blacks to obtain the rights and liberties guaranteed to all citizens of the United States.

A charismatic and passionate leader, Martin Luther King was an effective communicator and motivator, and by 1968, Martin Luther King was winning the hearts and minds more and more Americans on both sides of the color line. His efforts successfully merged the anti-Vietnam war movement and the civil rights movement, and the awful reality of the black situation in America could no longer be hidden behind the white curtain.

On March 28, 1968,Martin Luther King led a march through Memphis, Tennessee which, like all his marches, was intended to have been peaceful and non-violent. But thanks to a gang of agents provocateur called “The Invaders,” the march disintegrated into rioting and looting.

King barely escaped the March 28 debacle unharmed, and swore to return to Memphis and “conduct this demonstration properly — with no violence.” The date for the new march was set at April 4, 1968. This time, King would not survive his fateful trip to Memphis.

Muhammad Ali was born 1942 on January 17th in Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. His parents were Odessa, a house wife and Cassius, Sr. who worked as a billboard painter. He was named after his father, who was named after the 19thcentury abolitionist and politician Cassius Clay. Cassius had a younger brother named Rudolph (Rudy) Clay, who later became Rahman Ali. Even though Clay Sr. was a Methodist, Odessa raised the two boys as Baptist.The family lineage was of pre- civil war slaves. The family was also mixed with some English and Irish ancestry.

Cassius clay experienced everyday prejudices that most African-American boys experienced. Cassius had no idea that his life was about to change through circumstance which could have lead to a less admirable path. At the age of 12, he recalls his bike being stolen as the catalyst of his career choice. He recalls telling a white Louisville police officer, Joe martin that he wanted to find the culprit and beat him up. Joe Martin told this fuming and very determined boy that if he wanted to challenge someone, he would first have to learn how to fight. It just so happened, Martin trained young boxers at a nearby gym. Cassius also trained with a black American coach, Fred Stoner.

He was told he could make at least $4 a week on a local TV show, tomorrow’s Champions, which aired weekly and was hosted by Martin. Cassius would benefit by making money while being trained by Stoner, an even more experienced trainer than Martin. Under Stoners wing Cassius would go on to win not one but six Kentucky titles then two Golden Gloves Titles. He won the Amateur Athletic Union national Title. In 1960 he fought his way to a Gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympic Games. Cassius couldn’t have been happier or more confident in who he was becoming and where he wanted to go. However,when he returned home he got into an altercation at a segregated restaurant with the establishment and a white gang.

In Cassius 1975 autobiography, he talks in detail about feeling angry and disappointed in how so many things he experienced as a child was still very much prevalent and did not discriminate in regards to popularity or talent. He realized black was black in America. In a statement of protest, he threw his Olympic Gold medal into the Ohio River.

"We know who did it," Alabama Atty. Gen. Bill Baxley said Wednesday as he confirmed that he has reopened the investigation of a church bombing that killed four young black girls in Birmingham in 1963. Baxley said in an interview with Birmingham radio station hat the list of suspects had been narrowed down, but he declined to predict if or when arrests would be made.He said premature published reports about the investigation might have hurt. "There are some people in Jefferson County who ought to be pretty nervous right now," Baxley said in an earlier telephone interview.

The Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, dynamite blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church occurred during the time of racial demonstrations led by the late Martin Luther King. Twenty-three other people in the church were hurt and debris was scattered for blocks.Baxley later confirmed that he had talked to Rowe, and he was cooperative, "But we were working on this thing long before that. We had a lot of stuff already. Rowe was just another person we interviewed."He said Rowe didn’t give him a list of names as such, "but nine is too many."

Baxley repeated that he had no timetable for possible arrests. Meanwhile, Gov. George Wallace, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in Massachusetts, told a Boston radio station, "They ought to knock the bottom out of hell for anyone convicted of the bombing."Baxley said Birmingham police were aiding the new investigation. Published reports said Baxley had obtained report on FBI probes of the bombing incident.

A Birmingham newspaper said Baxley had a list of nine persons allegedly connected with the bombing, but the attorney general would not confirm it.The newspaper said one-time FBI informer Gary Thomas Rowe gave the names to Baxley before Rowe appeared before a U.S. Senate committee in December.

The newspaper said Rowe’s lawyer, Frank Gerdes of San Diego, Calif.; confirmed that Rowe met with Baxley, but refused to say what the men discussed.Rowe told the Senate committee that he was an FBI informer in Birmingham during the racial strife of the early 1970s.

He alleged that law officers gave a group of Ku Klux Klan members 15 minutes to assault "freedom rider" at a bus station before officers intervened. After that testimony, City Councilman Richard Arrington asked the Council to reopen the investigation of the church bombing. Vann asked the FBI for its files on the incident. A city spokesman said the files have never been received.

The trial was over. Crowds of spectators and newsmen filed from the courtroom, some rushing for telephones, others smiling or tight-lipped in disbelief. A group of deputies encircled Robert E. Chambliss, who had just been convicted of the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and, as they had several times before, led him off to jail. But this time, he apparently was going to jail for the rest of his life.

Chambliss, 73, was convicted by a jury on a charge of first degree murder in the death of Denise McNair, one of the four victims of the blast. The vote was 11 to 1 for conviction almost as soon as the jury went behind closed doors about 4:30 p.m.Thursday to decide Chambliss’ fate. The one juror reportedly was still holding out, undecided, when the foreman knocked on the door about 9 p.m.

Thursday and told the bailiff the jury was ready to call it quits, to go to the motel and to bed. It wasn’t until about 10:30 Friday morning the mind of that juror was made up. When a poll was taken shortly after the foreman read the verdict, all 12 men and women answered their vote was "guilty."

BAXLEY DECLARES FOUR MEN ARE STILL SOUGHT IN CHURCH BOMBING Birmingham News – Dec. 29, 1977 A 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klan member has been convicted of murder in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church, but Alabama’s attorney general says he’s still seeking up to four men involved in the blast that killed four girls.

Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show, Bill Baxley told Wednesday of his seven-year search for Robert Chambliss who was convicted of murder last month. "I was in law school at the time (of the bombing) and it was a traumatic experience to me that such a horrible thing happened in my state," Baxley said, "I thought that someday I might have a chance to do something about it." He was elected attorney general in 19970. "In early 1971," he said, "we started the investigation and spent a couple of years tracking down the wrong people. It took a long time to get the FBI reports.

We got them late in 1975." Baxley told television host Tom Snyder, "I was frustrated at some points and very angry at the FBI. But looking back on it I can understand a little bit their hesitancy.

They had some informants they had to protect. "They’d had some bad experiences in the South of information being leaked back to the very people they were investigating. Even after we convinced them we were after justice, there were bureaucratic problems." Baxley said he has been getting hate mail since the Chambliss conviction, but that more of it came from California than from Alabama.He also said he has gotten extradition papers signed by the governor of Georgia to bring to trial J.D. Stoner on charges of bombing another black Birmingham church in 1958.

No one was injured in that explosion. But he added that even with the papers, "we can’t get him out of Cobb County.

He went to court in Marietta and got a judge to issue an order preventing them from sending him back. If he can’t get Stoner extradited, Baxley said, "we’ll send our warrants to every surrounding county and confine him to that county for the rest of his life." Baxley, in his late 30s, has completed two terms as attorney general and under Alabama law, cannot run again.

Birmingham, Alabama, served as the center of black industrial employment for nearly a century, and the major site of black labor struggles and civil rights protests.

Nestled in the Jones Valley of north central Alabama, the rocky, mineral-rich land of Jefferson County has sustained a city known in its youth for rapid industrialization and later for its hard-fought battles to overcome social, political, and economic inequality. Since its founding in 1871, Birmingham, Alabama, pursued the economic development of a southern Magic City.

By the 1960s, the efforts of the local government to maintain racial segregation had earned Birmingham a new name, the Tragic City. Efforts to remedy a history of pervasive racial inequality continue today throughout Birmingham, through alliances among citizens that were once thought impossible.

Birmingham’s founders aspired to create the industrial center of the New South. The Elyton Land Company, eager to build a locus of business at the intersection of two main Southern railroads, bought the city land in the midst of Reconstruction. African Americans venturing to the new town sought relief from sharecropping on white-owned farms, but faced instead an industrial system quite similar to the cycle of dependence and harsh working conditions in rural areas. By 1880, African Americans comprised more than half of the industrial workers employed by firms like the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company and Sloss Furnaces. After a long day of dangerous work under sweltering conditions, workers returned to shotgun shack-style homes adjacent to the fuming plants. Although some firms provided recreational activities, few workers found relief at home; instead, they confronted the debt from loans of company-owned housing, food, and supplies.

With the discovery of techniques to produce steel from basic pig iron in 1895, feverish industrialization gripped the city. The steel industry boomed during the early decades of the 20th century, earning Birmingham the title Pittsburgh of the South. This prosperity collapsed in the wake of the Great Depression, which saw Birmingham’s industrial output plummet by nearly 70 percent. New Deal policies and World War II renewed life in the plants and mines, but did little to alter relations between labor and management.

As African American and white workers struggled against owners for higher wages and better working conditions, various forces limited the miners’ ability to organize. In general, segregation and wage inequality precluded interracial unions. Firms also hired convicts from the city to work in the mills and blast furnaces, at rates far below what they paid for free labor. Ninety percent of the convict labor supply was composed of African Americans, many of whom had been arrested for vagrancy or other empty charges. Contracts for prison labor continued until 1928, when the state abolished the system, but the fight for workers’ rights continued well into the 1940s.

One African American leader in this effort, Birmingham native Hosea Hudson, helped form the Southern Organizing Drive. A former sharecropper turned steel worker, Hudson was president of Steel Local 2815 and a delegate to the Birmingham Industrial Union Council from 1942 to 1947. His fight to ease the plight of African American laborers slowed when he was blackballed as a communist, but he and his contemporaries continued the uphill battle: in the 1950s, 73 percent of laborers were African American men; 77 percent of domestics were African American women. African Americans were also more likely to be poor: in 1950, 49 percent of Birmingham’s whites and 82 percent of the city’s African Americans earned less than $5000 per year.

However, as with many of the African American business districts that survived on the edges of U.S. cities, Fourth Avenue institutions and resources were vastly inferior to those available to whites. In Birmingham, the system of segregation strangled access to public transportation, education, decent medical care, and adequate housing. Lines of race divided buses, taxicabs, even ambulances. Before 1940 schools for African American children had shorter terms and often focused on courses in industrial training for boys and domestic work for girls. In 1950 the average class size in these schools was 48 students, compared to 35 in white schools. Until 1947, when the state ordered equal salaries, African American teachers earned 60 percent of the income of a white teacher. Birmingham’s African American residents also faced substandard medical care. The city excluded African American physicians from its hospitals until 1954 and blocked the African American community from access to its own hospital until 1964. Housing segregation, historically established during the industrial era, aggravated the absence of educational opportunities and social services. The color line trapped African Americans in the poorest and most poorly equipped neighborhoods in Birmingham. Only after World War II, in response to pressure from African American veterans, did the city allow African American families to establish middle class neighborhoods like Honeysuckle Hill and Titusville.

Advancements like equal pay for teachers and new neighborhoods for wealthy African Americans did little to assuage those who demanded full integration and equal rights in Birmingham. With the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956, Alabama entered the national spotlight in the struggle for civil rights. Birmingham was often at center stage in the Civil Rights Movement, not only for its citizens’ courageous efforts, but also for its local government’s staunch resistance. When groups like the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) filed petitions for integrated public facilities and an integrated downtown business community, city officials refused their demands.

Early in the 1960s, the ACMHR, led by the charismatic Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, invited Martin Luther King Jr., to participate in Project C, or Project Confrontation. The initiative organized selective buying campaigns to protest segregation of downtown businesses; planned demonstrations to protest the city’s refusal to fully integrate; and followed the legal tactics of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When thousands of children participated in a march for integration, Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor ordered the use of fire hoses and dogs to drive back the youthful demonstrators. Across the country, television stations fanned images of firefighters attacking citizens with powerful hoses and police carting children away in paddy wagons. This police riot in Birmingham drew national attention to the harsh realities of racial segregation in the South, and sparked more than a hundred black protests in cities and communities throughout the nation.

After being arrested during the demonstrations, King wrote his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," responding to the city’s white ministers who called for an end to the protests. Finally, following several weeks of demonstrations, civil rights and business leaders agreed on a settlement that broke down some of segregation’s barriers. But a climate of white defiance and lawlessness prevailed, with the active encouragement of Gov. George Wallace and other public officials. On September 15, 1963, terrorists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, claiming the lives of four young girls — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. The tragedies and triumphs of the Birmingham movement accelerated the move toward the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial segregation.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended decades of unequal access to civic participation in Birmingham. Without federal support, Birmingham’s African Americans had barely voted since the state constitution of 1901 barred them from the voting booth. More than 60 years later, as the city registered more African American voters than perhaps had ever cast a ballot there, the promise of political opportunity loomed over the city’s changing social and economic landscape. However, such change would come slowly in Alabama. In 1968 it took a Supreme Court ruling to stop the "free choice" system in the public schools that had effectively maintained segregation in education.

But 1968 also brought with it signs of Birmingham’s new faith in a bright future. That year, Birmingham elected the first African American to city council, attorney Arthur Shores. In 1973 a countywide vote placed Chris McNair, an African American, in the Alabama House of Representatives. At the close of the 1960s, new coalitions demonstrated the city’s commitment to the goal of racial equality. One group, the Community Affairs Committee, part of Operation New Birmingham, convened in 1969 to discuss the city’s race relations. By 1974 a Citizen Participation Program, another city-sponsored group, advised the local government on their progress. In 1979 Richard Arrington, an educator and city council member, became the first African American mayor of Birmingham. His leadership through the next decades was crucial to the realization of many programs aimed at equal representation and economic opportunity. By 1990 the Birmingham Plan was in place, an initiative that sought to ensure equal access to capital, loans, mortgages, and employment for the city’s women and African Americans. Arrington retired in 1999.

Since 1971, when Look magazine named Birmingham an All-Star City for its improved racial climate, African Americans have weathered high unemployment, tense relations with the city’s police department, and perhaps most significantly, the rapid decline of the steel industry. However, as the iron and steel base receded, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a university and medical complex, has rejuvenated the city’s economy. African Americans have also benefited from the city’s efforts to diversify and strengthen various industries, including health care, publishing, and manufacturing. In 1992 the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute opened its doors. Dedicated to the legacy of social change and the fight for civil rights at both national and international levels, the research facility and museum symbolize a commitment to the past and the future. On its doors, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. invite visitors to consider the story of this American city: "I like to believe the negative extremes of Birmingham’s past will resolve into the positive and utopian extremes of her future; that the sins of a dark yesterday will be redeemed in the achievements of a bright tomo

Clay returned to Louisville to start a professional boxing career. On October 1960, He won a six round decision fight over Tunney Hunsaker. Hunsaker was police chief of Fayetteville West Virginia. Clay had already had his own style of boxing set and it was an unconventional style of boxing. Usually hands would be held up to protect ones face but Clay who stood 6 ft 3in tall held his hands low and used his legs to quickly jot around the ring thus avoiding punches too the face at all costs. Hence the term, "Float like a butterfly", then surprising the opponent with a hit, "Sting like a bee." Clay’s career exploded during the two year span. From 1960 to 1963 Clay had 19 matches of which he won all, 15 by knockout. He fought well renowned boxers such as Lamar Clark who before Clay had a 40 bout knockout record. The others included Jim Robinson, Tony Esperti, Alonzo Johnson, George Logan, Donnie Fleeman,Willi Besmanoff, Henry cooper and Doug Jones, sonny banks, Alejandro Lavorant and Archie Moore.

Clay would consider Moore to train him once again and even considered asking sugar ray Robinson, but decided to stick with his trainer Angelo Dundee who he met during his junior years at a hotel. Dundee trainer to boxing champs, Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ramos, was training Willie Pastrano at the time. Clay asked to see him and was escorted to their hotel room. He began with a bout of questions about training and diet. How long to run and how long they practiced?

Clay wanted to be prepared both physical and mentally. He won what was called "the fight of the year" with Doug Jones. Clay then fought Henry Cooper who knocked Clay down in 4th round but the fight was stopped due to Coopers unclothing gashes over his eyes. The match was called and Clay was announced as the victor. Clay’s next fight would be with Sonny Liston for the title. Clay was perceived as cocky, taunting his opponents in and outside the ring. Clay would later admit to emulating the facade of the great wrestler, gorgeous George Wagner.

Clay remembers seeing him in Las Vegas. Gorgeous George would carry on brooding and yelling praises about himself to the audience and his opponent. George ode this sports entertainment style from Lord Patrick Lansdowne who would enter a ring wearing a doublet and robe with two men alongside him. Clay watched how the crowd became frenzied after George would prance around and proclaim, "I’ll crawl across the ring and cut my hair off! But that’s not gonna happen because I’m the greatest wrestler in the world!" even though he clearly was not. Clay found this extremely intriguing and later admitted that it was after seeing gorgeous’ George that he decided to emulate this behavior as did the famous James brown.

Even with all this bravado and over zealousness, he was not favored to win against the heavy weight champion, Sonny Liston. The fight was to be held in Miami, Florida on February 25, 1964. The fight was nearly called off by promoter, Bill Faversham due to the speculative stories about Clay being involved with Malcolm X. Malcolm X was at the time a member of the Nation of Islam.Clay protested, but agreed to reveal his true intentions or relationship with the controversial Nation of Islam after the fight.

Before the fight began, Clay went about his usual boasting. He affirmed that he would "Float like a Butterfly and ting like a bee." He told Liston, "Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see." He even called Liston a "Big ugly bear". Clay was especially wired. His pulse rate was recorded at 120 to his base which was usually around 55. Liston and his team speculated that Clay might have been nervous. The first three rounds went to Clay, however Liston started gaining momentum during the fourth after Clay was temporarily blinded by a stinging sensation in his eyes. It is speculated that perhaps Liston corner had applied something to his gloves as this happened at a Liston fight on at least two other occasions. Clay stayed clear from Liston until he regained proper vision Clay again was ahead by points and in the Seventh round, Liston refused to answer the Bell, stating that he had a shoulder injury.

At age 22, Clay was the youngest boxer to ever take the title from a reigning heavyweight. Before the rematch with Liston, Clay had publicly announced his conversion to Islam. The rematch with Liston took place in Lewiston, main in may 1965. Clay won by knockout in the first round. To some it appeared to easy and some believed maybe Liston was threatened by The nation of Islam, however there was little proof to support this insinuation.

Rosa Parks, Rosa Louise McCauley (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005), African American civil rights activist, who is often called the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a bus triggered the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 and set in motion the test case for the desegregation of public transportation.

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested for disregarding an order to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger. Her protest galvanized a growing movement to desegregate public transportation and marked a historic turning point in the African American battle for civil rights. Rosa Parks was much more than an accidental symbol, however. It is sometimes overlooked that at the time of her arrest, she was no ordinary bus rider; she was an experienced activist with strong beliefs.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was the granddaughter of former slaves and the daughter of James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a rural schoolteacher. The future civil rights leader grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, where she attended the all-black Alabama State College. In 1932 she married Raymond Rosa Parks, a barber, with whom she became active in Montgomery’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Raymond Parks’s volunteer efforts went toward helping free the defendants in the famous Scottsboro case, in which nine young black men were accused of raping two white women. Rosa Rosa Parks worked as the NAACP chapter’s youth adviser. In 1943, when Rosa Rosa Parks actually joined the NAACP, her involvement with the organization became even greater. She worked with the organization’s state president, Edgar Daniel Nixon, to mobilize a voter registration drive in Montgomery. That same year, Rosa Parks was elected secretary of the Montgomery branch.

In the early 1950s Rosa Parks found work as a tailor’s assistant at a department store, Montgomery Fair. She also had a part-time job as a seamstress for Virginia and Clifford Durr, a white liberal couple; they encouraged Rosa Parks in her civil rights work. Six months before her famous protest, Rosa Parks received a scholarship to attend a workshop on school integration for community leaders. It was held at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, and Rosa Parks spent several weeks there.

The segregated seating policies on public buses had long been a source of resentment within the black community in Montgomery and in other cities throughout the Deep South. African Americans were required to pay their fares at the front of the bus and then to reboard through the back door. The white bus drivers, who were invested with police powers, frequently harassed blacks, sometimes driving away before African American passengers were able to get back on the bus. During peak hours, the drivers pushed back the boundary markers that segregated the bus, crowding those in the "colored section" to provide more whites with seats.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks took her seat in the front of the "colored section" of a Montgomery bus. The driver asked Rosa Parks and three other black riders to relinquish their seats to whites, but Rosa Parks refused (the others complied). The driver called the police, and Rosa Parks was arrested. She was released later that night after Nixon and the Durrs posted a $100 bond.

Although three black women had been arrested earlier that year for similar acts of defiance, and Rosa Parks herself had been thrown off a bus by the same driver 12 years before, this time the opponents of segregation were prepared to mount a counterattack. The Montgomery chapter of the NAACP had been looking for a test case to challenge the legality of segregated bus seating and to woo public opinion with a series of protests.

The morning after her arrest, Rosa Parks agreed to let the NAACP take on her case. Another organization, the Women’s Political Council (WPC), led by JoAnn Robinson, initiated the idea of a one-day bus boycott. Within 24 hours of Rosa Parks’s defiance, the WPC had distributed more than 52,000 fliers announcing the bus boycott, which was to take place the day of Rosa Parks’s trial. On December 5, as buses went through their routes almost empty, Rosa Parks was convicted by the local court. She refused to pay the fine of $14, and with the help of her lawyer, Ed D. Gray, she appealed to the circuit court.

Rosa Parks was widely known as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, but her iconic stature afforded her little financial security. She lost her job as a seamstress at Montgomery Fair and was unable to find other work in Montgomery. Rosa Parks and her husband relocated to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957, where they struggled financially for the next eight years. Rosa Parks’s fortunes improved somewhat in 1965, when U.S. congressional representative John F. Conyers Jr. hired her as an administrative assistant, a position she held until 1987.

Rosa Parks has remained a committed activist. In the 1980s she worked in support of the South African antiapartheid movement, and in Detroit in 1987 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Rosa Parks Institute for Self-Development, a career counseling center for black youth.

Rosa Parks has received numerous awards and tributes, including the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1970 and the prestigious Martin Luther King, Jr. Award in 1980. Cleveland Avenue in the city of Montgomery was renamed Rosa Rosa Parks Boulevard in 1965. In 1996 U.S. president Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that the U.S. government can give to a civilian.

A friend once described Rosa Parks as someone who, as a rule, did not defy authority, but once determined on a course of action, refused to back down: "She might ignore you, go around you, but never retreat.

Parks resided in Detroit until she died of natural causes at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, about 7:00PM EDT, in her apartment on the east side of the city. She and her husband had never had children and she had outlived her only sibling, but she was outlived by her sister-in-law, 13 nieces and nephews and their families, and several cousins, most of them residents of Michigan or Alabama.

City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005 that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Parks’ coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, where she lay in repose at the altar, dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess, on October 29, 2005. A memorial service was held there the following morning, and one of the speakers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that if it had not been for Parks, she would probably have never become the Secretary of State.

In the evening the casket was transported to Washington, D.C., and taken, aboard a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, making her the first woman and second African American ever to receive this honor. An estimated 50,000 people viewed the casket there, and the event was broadcast on television on October 31, 2005. This was followed by another memorial service at a different St. Paul AME church in Washington on the afternoon of October 31, 2005. For two days, she lay in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Parks’ funeral service, seven hours long, was held on Wednesday, November 2, 2005, at the Greater Grace Temple Church. After the funeral service, an honor guard from the Michigan National Guard laid the U.S. flag over the casket and carried it to a horse-drawn hearse, which had been intended to carry it, in daylight, to the cemetery. As the hearse passed the thousands of people who had turned out to view the procession, many clapped and cheered loudly and released white balloons. Rosa was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel’s mausoleum. The chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel just after her death. Parks had previously prepared and placed a headstone on the selected location with the inscription "Rosa L. Parks, wife"

Ali’s professional debut as a heavyweight came in October 1960 with a six-round decision over Tunney Hunsaker. Ali won his next 18 fights, 15 by knockouts. On February 25, 1964, in Miami Beach, Florida, he waged his first challenge for the heavyweight championship in a match against Sonny Liston.

Although many boxing experts believed Liston was invincible, the brash 22-year old Ali spent the weeks leading up to the fight entertaining reporters and fans with colorfully worded promises of his impending victory. In one of the most stunning upsets in boxing history, Ali delivered his promises: Liston was unable to answer the bell for the start of the seventh round.

Shortly after the fight, Cassius Clay startled the sports world by announcing that he had joined the Nation of Islam and had changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Ali defended his heavyweight crown in nine matches over the next two years. His title was revoked in 1967 when, citing his Islamic faith, he refused induction into the United States military and was sentenced to a five-year prison term. He was released on appeal.

Ali started fighting again in 1970, although the Supreme Court of the United States did not officially reverse his conviction for draft evasion until 1971. Knockout victories over Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena earned Ali a chance to regain his heavyweight crown. But on March 8, 1971, Ali lost a 15-round decision to Joe Frazier.

This was the first loss of Ali’s career. Ali regained the heavyweight championship on October 30, 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), with an 8th-round knockout of George Foreman. Over the next four years, Ali defended his title ten times, most famously in a 15-round victory over Frazier on October 1, 1975, in Manila, Philippines, a fight promoted as the "Thrilla in Manila." On February 15, 1978, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Ali relinquished the crown to Olympic champion Leon Spinks in a 15-round decision. However, he regained the championship on September 15, 1978, prevailing in a 15-round decision over Spinks in their rematch at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. With this victory, Ali became the first fighter to win the heavyweight crown three times.

Ali announced his retirement from boxing on June 27, 1979, but within a year he challenged the new heavyweight champion, Larry Holmes, for the crown. On October 2, 1980, in Las Vegas, Holmes dealt Ali the worst loss of his career, physically punishing the former champion before delivering a knockout blow in the 11th round. Ali retired permanently in December 1981 after losing a 10-round decision to Trevor Berbick.

Ali’s skills as a fighter included lightning-quick hands, a razor-sharp jab, agile footwork, and especially in the later part of his career, the ability to absorb punches from bigger and stronger opponents. As important as these physical skills were to Ali’s success, what distinguished him as an athletic performer was his use of the boxing ring as a public stage. "It is Ali," suggested American scholar and baseball official Bartlett Giamatti, "who brought to the surface the actor in every athlete." A brilliant showman and provocateur, Ali made use of the media—especially television—as an integral part of his competitive strategy.

Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion, introduced boasting and the taunting of one’s opponent into the culture of boxing; Ali elevated the language of ridicule to an art form. A master of rhyming insult and a seminal contributor to the African American tradition of "signifying" or "playing the dozens," Ali transformed the prefight weigh-in from a procedural formality into an occasion for a display of creative verbal warfare.

In the days leading up to his championship match against Foreman in 1974, Ali regaled the international press corps on hand in Zaire with this exercise in matching couplets: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see. Now you see me, now you don’t. George thinks he will, but I know he won’t." In the fight itself, Ali flustered the physically imposing, harder-punching Foreman with a stealthy defensive maneuver he dubbed the "rope-a-dope."

Ali’s celebrity status and instincts as a performer did not diminish his religious convictions or his defiant independence. His affiliation with the Nation of Islam came at a time when many Americans, and many of his fans, considered the Nation a subversive and dangerous organization. Because of his religious convictions, Ali refused to serve in the American military. "I have searched my conscience," he said, "and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call." Similarly, he recited:

Keep asking me, no matter how long On the war in Viet Nam, I sing this song I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.

Such sentiments led some critics to portray Ali and the Nation of Islam as anti-American. In the sports arena, Ali’s flamboyance and self-promotion challenged a traditional, unwritten code under which black athletes were expected to be dutiful, modest, and respectful of white authority.

Since Ali retired from the ring, much of the attention focused on him has centered on his physical condition. He suffers from Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder that causes tremors, loss of balance, memory lapses, and confusion.

Doctors have asserted that Ali’s symptoms were brought on by the repeated blows to the head he endured in the latter part of his boxing career. This has prompted medical organizations and other civic groups to lobby for the use of head gear in the ring or for the elimination of boxing altogether.

The young Ali was practically untouchable: Liston could land only two punches in their 1965 rematch. But in his late fights against the hard-hitting Frazier, Spinks, and Holmes, Ali took several hundred punches in every match. In the punishing 1980 loss to Holmes, Ali took 125 punches in the ninth and tenth rounds alone.

Ali’s neurological disorder is essentially a motor-skills problem; he has retained his wit and his thought processes are clear. Despite his condition, he has remained an important figure on the world stage. In November 1990 Ali traveled to Iraq to meet with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in a bid to forestall war in the Persian Gulf. In late 1996 Ali acted as a spokesperson for Operation USA in war-torn Rwanda.

Earlier in 1996 Ali lit the flame to open the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been honored for creating the Muhammad Ali Community and Economic Development Corporation, an organization that teaches job skills to low-income public housing residents in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1994 Sports Illustrated ranked Ali first on its "40 for the Ages List." In 1987 The Ring named him the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. Ali was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990 and into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983. The Muhammad Ali Museum opened in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1995.

On September 15 1963 at 10:22am, a bomb went off in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls. It was a seminal act of cowardice. And it had the unintended effect of changing the perpetrators world forever. In the words of Rev. Jesse Jackson, " We were able to transform a crucifixion into resurrection.

The church served not only as a place of spiritual renewal, but as the base of operations for African Americans tired, quite literally, of sitting at the back of the bus, drinking from "colored" water fountains and having to explain to their children why they couldn’t eat at a department store lunch counter.

The bomb exploded during Sunday school, killing Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Rosamond Robertson, all 14, and Carol Denise McNair, 11. The lives awaiting them were destroyed in what one hopes was a blast too sudden and too loud for their young minds to fully comprehend.

The murders were left hanging, unexplained, for more than a decade until a career criminal named Robert Chambliss was brought to trial and convicted. His nickname: "Dynamite Bob."

Freedom Summer, highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register blacks to vote during the summer of 1964.

During the summer of 1964, thousands of activists in the Civil Rights Movement, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states to try to end the long-time political disfranchisement of African Americans in the region.

Although black men won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the 15th Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right. White local and state officials systematically kept blacks from voting through formal methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings. The inability to vote was only one of many problems blacks encountered in the racist society around them, but the civil rights officials who decided to focus on voter registration understood its crucial significance, as did white supremacists. An African American voting bloc would be able to bring about social and political change.

Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter registration activities in the South that started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because of the state’s particularly dismal voting rights record. In 1962 only 6.7 percent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which included the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

SNCC volunteers, led by Robert Moses, played the largest role, providing 90 to 95 percent of the funding and 95 percent of headquarters staff. By mobilizing volunteer white college students from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public relations coup as hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the country to cover the voter registration campaign.The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was a major focus of the summer program. More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a slate of 68 delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of delegates representing Mississippi’s all white Democratic Party. Although the effort failed, it drew national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of MFDP delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also lead to a ban on racially discriminatory delegations at future conventions.

Freedom Summer officials also established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in Mississippi’s educational system. Mississippi’s black schools were poorly funded, and teachers had to use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history. Many white college students were assigned to teach in the Freedom Schools, whose curriculum included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership development, in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic. Freedom School organizers hoped to draw at least 1,000 students that first summer; 3,000 enrolled. The schools later became a model for social programs such as Head Start, as well as alternative educational institutions.

Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups but also from local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and volunteers’ homes were frequent targets; 37 black churches and 30 black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned during that summer, and the cases often went unsolved. More than 1,000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. But the summer’s most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers—a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white coworkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. On June 21, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner set out to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia, Mississippi, but were arrested that afternoon and held for several hours on alleged traffic violations. Their release from jail was the last time they were seen alive before their badly decomposed bodies were discovered under a nearby dam six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney from a savage beating.

The murders made headlines all over the country, and provoked an outpouring of national support for the Civil Rights Movement. But many black volunteers realized that because two of the victims were white, these murders attracted much more attention than previous attacks in which all the victims had been black. This added to a growing resentment that they had already begun to feel toward white volunteers.

There was growing dissension within SNCC’s ranks over charges of white paternalism and elitism. Black volunteers complained that whites seemed to think they had a natural claim on leadership roles, and that they treated rural blacks as though they were ignorant. There was also increasing hostility from black and white workers over interracial romances that developed during the summer. Meanwhile, women volunteers of both races were charging black and white men with sexist behavior. These conflicts led to lasting divisions within SNCC, especially over the role of white volunteers.

Some African American officials, such as Stokely Carmichael, reacted by gravitating toward the all-black Black Power Movement, while many white volunteers returned to their college campuses and became involved in other forms of social activism, such as the antiwar and women’s movements. Despite internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy.

The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that among other things outlawed the tactics that Southern states used to prevent blacks from voting.

Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action. As Fannie Lou Hamer later said, "Before the 1964 project there were people that wanted change, but they hadn’t dared to come out. After 1964 people began moving. To me it’s one of the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi.

Separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks. "Colored balconies" in movie theaters. Seats in the back of the bus. Soldiers called out to protect little children who were trying to go to school.

It may be difficult to believe these were examples of conditions in America less than 60 years ago. The struggle to change these conditions, and to win equal protection under the law for citizens of all races, formed the backdrop of Martin Luther King’s short life.

The Civil Rights Movement and the escalating war in Vietnam were the two great catalysts for social protest in the sixties. Since the end of the Civil War many organizations had been created to promote the goals of racial justice and equality in America, but progress was painfully slow. It was not until the sixties that a hundred years of effort would begin to garner the attention necessary to force a modicum of change. There was little consensus on how to promote equality on a national levelÐgroups such as the NAACP, CORE, and Dr. Martin Luther King’s SCLC, endorsed peaceful methods and believed change could be affected by working around the established system; other groups such as the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Nationalist Movement advocated retaliatory violence and a separation of the races.

There were numerous marches, rallies, strikes, riots, and violent confrontations with the police. National leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X would be assassinated, violence would claim the lives of young and old, and rigged all-white juries mocked justice in cases involving crimes perpetrated by whites against African Americans. Restaurants, hotels, night clubs, public facilities, and the school systems were still segregated during the early sixties, and educational and job opportunities for minorities were far below those available to the white majority. The African-American community, being in the minority, depended on the support of the white population, and at least in terms of sentiment, those caught up in the spirit of the hippie movement took the cause of racial justice and equality to heart, and often to the streets.

Civil Rights Timeline:

1954 Brown vs. Board of Education: U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in public schools.

1955 Bus boycott launched in Montgomery, Ala., after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, is arrested December 1 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person .

1956 December 21. After more than a year of boycotting the buses and a legal fight, the Montgomery buses desegregate.

1957 Garfield High School becomes first Seattle high school with more than 50 percent nonwhite student body. At previously all-white Central High in Little Rock, Ark., 1,000 paratroopers are called by President Eisenhower to restore order and escort nine black students.

1960 The sit-in protest movement begins in February at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. and spreads across the nation.

1961 Freedom rides begin from Washington, D.C: Groups of black and white people ride buses through the South to challenge segregation. King makes his only visit to Seattle. He visits numerous places, including two morning assemblies at Garfield High School.

1962 Blacks become the majority at Garfield High, 51 percent of the student population – a first for Seattle. The school district average is 5.3 percent. Two killed, many injured in riots as James Meredith is enrolled as the first black at the University of Mississippi.

1963 Police arrest King and other ministers demonstrating in Birmingham, Ala., then turn fire hoses and police dogs on the marchers.

Medgar Evers, NAACP leader, is murdered June 12 as he enters his home in Jackson, Miss. About 1,300 people march from the Central Area to downtown Seattle, demanding greater job opportunities for blacks in department stores.The Bon Marche promises 30 new jobs for blacks.

About 400 people rally at Seattle City Hall to protest delays in passing an open-housing law. In response, the city forms a 12-member Human Rights Commission but only two blacks are included, prompting a sit-in at City Hall and Seattle’s first civil-rights arrests. 250,000 people attend the March on Washington, D.C. urging support for pending civil-rights legislation. The event was highlighted by King’s "I have a dream" speech.

The Seattle School District implements a voluntary racial transfer program, mainly aimed at busing black students to mostly white schools.

Four girls killed Sept. 15 in bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

1964 Seattle City Council agrees to put together an open-housing ordinance but insists on putting it on the ballot. Voters defeat it by a 2-to-1 ratio. It will be four more years before an open-housing ordinance becomes law.

Three civil-rights workers are murdered in Mississippi.

July 2 – President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Out of 955 people employed by the Seattle Fire Department, just two were African American, and only one was Asian — 0.2 and 0.1 percent of the force, respectively. By the end of 1993, the department was 12.2 percent African American and 5.6 percent Asian

1965 Malcolm X is murdered Feb. 21, 1965. Three men are convicted of his murder.

August 6. President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act, which King sought, authorized federal examiners to register qualified voters and suspended devices such as literacy tests that aimed to prevent African Americans from voting.

August 11-16: Watts riots leave 34 dead in Los Angeles.

1967 Sam Smith elected Seattle’s first black city councilman.

1968 Aaron Dixon becomes first leader of Black Panther Party branch in Seattle.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., unleashing violence in more than 100 cities.

In response to King’s death, Seattle residents hurled firebombs, broke windows, and pelted motorists with rocks. Ten thousand people also marched to Seattle Center for a rally in his memory.

Rally at Garfield High in support of Dixon, Larry Gossett, and Carl Miller, sentenced to six months in the King County Jail for unlawful assembly in an earlier demonstration. Before the speakers were finished, firebombs and rocks were flying toward cars coming down 23rd Avenue. Sporadic riots in Seattle’s Central Area during the summer.

1969 Edwin Pratt, executive director of the Seattle Urban League and a moderate and respected African American leader, is shot to death while standing in the doorway of his home. The murder has never been solved.

1977 Seattle School Board adopts a plan designed to eliminate racial imblance in schools by fall 1979.

1978 Seattle becomes the largest city in the United States to desegregate its schools without a court order; nearly one-quarter of the school district’s students are bused as part of the "Seattle Plan." Two months later, voters pass an anti-busing initiative. It is later ruled unconstitutional

In a blow to efforts to diversify university enrollment, the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws racial quotas in a suit brought by Allan Bakke, a white man who had been turned down by the medical school at University of California, Davis.

1989 Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes the nation’s first African American to be elected state governor.

1992 The first racially based riots in years erupt in Los Angeles and other cities after a jury acquits L.A. police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, an African American.

March on Washington, 1963, massive public demonstration that articulated the goals of the Civil Rights Movement.

The 1963 March on Washington attracted an estimated 250,000 people for a peaceful demonstration to promote Civil Rights and economic equality for African Americans. Participants walked down Constitution and Independence avenues, then — 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed — gathered before the Lincoln Monument for speeches, songs, and prayer. Televised live to an audience of millions, the march provided dramatic moments, most memorably the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Far larger than previous demonstrations for any cause, the march had an obvious impact, both on the passage of civil rights legislation and on nationwide public opinion. It proved the power of mass appeal and inspired imitators in the antiwar, feminist, and environmental movements. But the March on Washington in 1963 was more complex than the iconic images most Americans remember it for. As the high point of the Civil Rights Movement, the march — and the integrationist, nonviolent, liberal form of protest it stood for — was followed by more radical, militant, and race-conscious approaches.

The march was initiated by A. Philip Randolph, international president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL-CIO; and sponsored by five of the largest civil rights organizations in the United States. Planning for the event was complicated by differences among members. Known in the press as "the big six," the major players were Randolph; Whitney Young, president of the National Urban League (NUL); Roy Wilkins, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); James Farmer, founder and president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); John Lewis, president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and Martin Luther King Jr. founder and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Bayard Rustin, a close associate of Randolph’s and organizer of the first Freedom Ride in 1947, orchestrated and administered the details of the march.

It was Randolph who first conceived of a march on Washington. In 1941 his threat to assemble 100,000 African Americans in the capital helped convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign an executive order banning discrimination in the defense industries and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. More than 20 years later, Randolph revived his idea. His primary interest, as always, was jobs — African Americans were disproportionately unemployed and underpaid. In a December 1962 meeting, Randolph and Rustin began planning the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

While Randolph (and the National Urban League’s Young) focused on jobs, the other groups centered on freedom. Both SNCC and CORE were organizing nonviolent protests against Jim Crow segregation and discrimination. In 1963 King’s SCLC was waging a long campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama. The violence Sheriff Bull Connor and his men visited upon peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham brought national attention to the issue of civil rights.

As Rustin later said, credit for mobilizing the March on Washington could go to "Bull Connor, his police dogs, and his fire hoses." By June, King had agreed to cooperate with Randolph on the march. The older, more conservative NAACP and NUL were still ambivalent.

After winning Randolph’s promise that the march would be a nonviolent, nonconfrontational event — a promise that dismayed the more militant CORE and SNCC leaders, who had also joined with Randolph — the NAACP’s Wilkins pledged his support.

In addition, white supporters such as labor leader Walter Reuther and Jewish, Catholic, and Presbyterian officials offered their help. The date was set for August 28, 1963.

"The Death of Emmett Till" is a song written by Bob Dylan about the murder of African American Emmett Till that occurred on August 28, 1955.

One bootlegged performance, which was recorded from Cynthia Gooding’s radio show called Folksinger’s Choice sometime in early 1962, starts with Dylan saying that the melody is based on chords he heard from folk musician Len Chandler.The melody is quite similar to "The House of the Rising Sun" from the album Bob Dylan.

Dylan’s performance of the song was released on the 1972 album Broadside Ballads, Vol. 6: Broadside Reunion, under the artist name Blind Boy Grunt. In the song’s lyrics, Dylan recounts "the details of Till’s murder" and "summarizes the trial.

According to Glenn C. Altschuler, when in 1962 the song "was played on WGES radio, the telephone company in Chicago reported 8,394 busy signals, virtually all of them listeners trying to contact the station.Stephen J. Whitfield calls the lyrics "mawkish" and describes "the ballad" as "a precocious attempt to continue the tradition of the folk protest song.

The Death of Emmett Till:

Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago, When a young boy from Chicago walked through aSouthern door.

This boy’s fateful tragedy you should all 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 disremember what. They tortured him and did some 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 blood-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 was no lie, He was a Black skin boy so he was born to 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 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.

Song by Bob Dylan

Emmett Till was a black, 14 year old boy a from the working-class neighborhood of Chicago south side who inadvertently started the American civil rights movement. While visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi in August 1955 he got into big trouble.

Although friends and family thought of Emmett Till as a bit brash and fun loving, they didn’t think Emmett Till could seriously offend anyone. In spite of a stutter emanating from a bout with nonparalytic polio at age 3, he often had a smart mouth.

Emmett Till knew segregation from personal experience. His elementary school was a public school with only black students. But this segregation he knew in the North was nothing like what he would be introduced to in the South. Before Emmett Till left Chicago his mother warned him not to risk trouble with white people during his visit to Mississippi. "If you have to get on your knees and bowel what white person goes past, do it willingly," she said.

People who knew Emmett Till remembered that he enjoyed pulling pranks. In front of Bryant’s grocery and meat market, a country store with Coca-Cola sign outside, Emmett Till showed a picture a white girl to some friends. She was his girl, he said. Intrigued, his black companions said there was a pretty white woman in the store at that moment. They dared Emmett Till to go in and talk to her. He went in bought some candy, then turned to her on the way out and said, "bye, baby." One observer afterward claimed he had whistled at her. A girl who heard the story on the grapevine said, "when that ladies husband come back, there is going to be trouble." She was right.

The husband, Roy Bryant, was out-of-town, trucking shrimp from Louisiana to Texas. Three days later, Bryant paid a visit to the unpainted cabin of Mose Wright, the grandfather of Emmett Till’s cousin. Bryant and his brother-in-law, J. W. Milam, said they had come to "get the boy who done the talkin’." Wright tried to tell them that Emmett Till was a northerner, inexperienced in Mississippi ways, and that they might want to just give him "a good whipping." Instead, they piled him into the back seat of their car and drove him to the Tallahatchie River.

When they got out, they made the boy carry a Seventy-five pound cotton gin fan to the River bank, ordered him to strip, beat him and gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and through his body in the River. When the corpse was recovered, it was so badly mangled that Mose Wright could only identify it by an initialed ring. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Till’s mother, 33 year old Mamie Bradley, requested to be sent back to Chicago where she could make sure it was really her son. When she saw it, she sobbed and decided to have an open casket funeral so the world could see what murderers had done to her only son.

When a picture of the corpse was published in the black weekly magazine Jet, black Americans everywhere saw the mutilated, distended corpse. Bradley delayed the burial for four days to let "the world see what they did to my boy." In less than two weeks after Emmett Till’s body was buried in Chicago, Milam and Bryant went on trial in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education (May 17, 1954), which mandated the integration of public schools, this case was watched closely around the country.

In fact, Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi asserted that the decision had "destroyed the Constitution" and Mississippi was not obliged to obey it. State Sen. Walter Givhan claimed the real purpose of the NAACP’s campaign to end school desegregation was "to open the bedroom doors of our white women to Negro men." The problem in the case was the lack of witnesses. Curtis Jones, Till’s cousin, was forbidden by his mother to go to Chicago to testify, for fear he would be physically harmed. But his grandfather, 64 year old Mose Wright, was determined to testify. In the courtroom, he forthrightly identified the defendants as the men who had kidnapped Emmett Till.

Afterward, Wright said, "it was the first time in my life I had the courage to accuse a white man of a crime, let alone something as terrible as killing a boy." The jurors deliberated a little more than an hour before issuing a verdict of "not guilty," saying they thought the state failed to prove the identity of the body. Reaction was swift from blacks in other states who thought that by condoning the murder of children, Mississippi had become the ultimate symbol of white supremacy.

Public reaction was further fueled by the decision not to indict Milam and Bryant on separate charges of kidnapping. White newspaper editors in many cities condemned Mississippi. In spite of the disappointment at the verdict, black Americans recognized the significance of black witnesses testifying against white people in court Historians believe that the murder of Emmett Till at a powerful impact on a new generation of blacks, those who were adolescents in the 1950s and became the engine of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Mamie Bradley lectured around the country, calling herself " a nobody " and her son "a little nobody who shook up the world." She said she used to think what happened to blacks in the South was their business. "The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any unless, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all."

Emmett Till Louis "Bobo" Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) The difference between the political, economic, and social milieu of the large Chicago metropolis and the rural Mississippi Delta in 1955 was vast, even though the two had strong connections. Chicago got more than its share of Southern blacks, as it became the mecca for Mississippi blacks seeking a northern refuge.

While relations between blacks and whites or not exactly great, rigid Jim-Crowism (legal separation, that is) was not the case up North. In Chicago, there was de facto (by practice) segregation, whereas in Mississippi, there was de jure (by law) segregation. Emmett Till lived in a predominantly black middle-class neighborhood and attended a predominantly black school, but there were a few white classmates, friends, and teachers.

There were also some interracial marriages, which demonstrated the intermingling of black and white. Clearly, the (veil) or the curtain of separation between the two bases was not as neatly drawn in Chicago as it was in the Deep South. Emmett Till, born and raised in Chicago, was accustomed to more relaxed relations between the two races. His mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, cautioned him "not to fool with white people down South." She said to him "if you have to get on your knees and bow when a white person goes past, do it willingly."

Race relations in Mississippi in 1955 where another story. Nothing redeeming has ever been said about Mississippi in this context. It was the cornerstone and the definition of Jim-Crowism for black folk. Segregation on all fronts was absolute law. Blacks and whites lived in different neighborhoods, attended separate schools, worked in different capacities or different levels when working together, and there were no instances of interracial social intermingling or interracial marriages.

The subservient attitude and manner of the Mississippi blacks mirrored their Jim Crow conditions. When Emmett Till arrived in the small town of a population of 350, he must have observed the inferior conditions of blacks there-their humble huts, their meager closing, and their oppressed speech and mannerisms. His great uncles tiny sharecropper’s home, for example, was much like those of the majority of blacks in that area-small, crowded, and tattered.

The "Ya Sir" and "Naw Sir" place of blacks in that society was, indeed, oppressive. Even the adults feared the whites, including whites who were many years there juniors. The subservient position and mannerisms of his Great Uncle Mose and Great Aunt Elizabeth reflected that of most blacks there.

But the concerns of Emmett Till, the child, were certainly not those of adults. There was his Mississippi cousin, Simeon, and other kids in the area who were anxious to show him the fun and excitement of the tiny Deep South town of Money-a town that was to be the site of the Wolf whistle, the infamous Till abduction, and a brutal lynching. This was followed by the subsequent mock trial in the nearby Sunflower County Courthouse, in the town of Sumner, whose motto was ironically "A Good Place to Raise A Boy." To be sure, Emmett Till’s focus was more on the fun that awaited him as a child than on the oppressive conditions of blacks.

On Wednesday evening, August 24th, in Money, only a few days after he had arrived Emmett Till and his cousin Curtis Jones drove Mose Wright’s ’41 Ford to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, a country store with a big metal Coca-Cola sign outside. There the boys met up with some other black children, and Curtis Jones began a game of checkers with a seventy year old black man sitting by the side of the building. Outside the store, Emmett Till was showing off a picture of a white girl who he claimed was a friend of his in Chicago.

Emmett Till bragged to the titillated boys that this white girl was his girl, and Jones recalls one of the southern boys said "’Hey, there’s a white girl in that store there. I bet you won’t go in there and talk to her.’ So he went in to get some candy. When he was leaving the store, he told her, ‘ Bye, Baby.’ And that’s when the old man (the checker player) started telling us that she would go to her car, get a pistol, and blow his brains out."

The boys jumped in their car as Carolyn Bryant came out the swinging screen doors. They sped out of the little town. Three days passed, and the boys forgot about Emmett Till’s comment to the pretty white woman. At about 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 28, Emmett Emmett Till experienced the ultimate terror.

Twenty-four-year-old Roy Bryant and his thirty-six-year-old step Brother J. W. Milam stormed the home of sixty-five-year-old Mose Wright in search of the "boy who done the talkin’." Mose pleaded with them, telling them the boy was from "up nawth" and didn’t know a thing about how to act was white folks down South. He begged them to simply give the boy a good whipping. But, threatening Wright’s family with a flashlight and a gun, they abducted the youth, stating "the fat boy from Chicago" had violated Carolyn Bryant’s honor.

No amount of begging or pleading could have possibly pacified them. They came in search of revenge for what was considered America’s greatest taboo: an attack by a black man on the sanctity of white womanhood.

As they stormed through the house, Mrs. Wright pleaded with them not to kill him. According to the account given by his cousins, they told Emmett Till to get up, get dressed, and come with them. Emmett Till followed their instructions, displaying no fear, which inflamed them and even more. Given the particulars, it is not surprising that Till verbal expressions, too, irritated an inflamed them. When DS assets came for hand and questioned a fewer the boy from up North, Till simply responded, "yes," rather than "yassar."

Indeed, this further ignited indignation on the part of the white men, who are totally unprepared and accustomed to blacks, even among the senior citizens, not addressing them with " Sir ." Bryant and Milam corporate herb by Till’s behavior. They were used to blacks crying, begging for mercy, and apologizing for any wrong that they might have done. Not so with Till, the northerner who obviously could not imagine his ensuing fate. Obviously, proper southern etiquette had not been instilled in him. He was naive.

Ultimately, for a teenage indiscretion-characteristic behavior of teenagers going through the rights of passage-Emmett Till was taken away, flogged, mutilated, and murdered. Milam drove Emmett Till to the Tallahatchie River, and made the boy carry a 75 pound cotton gin fan from the back of the truck to the river bank before ordering him to strip. Milam then shot the boy in the head. Emmett Till’s nude body was not found until Wednesday, August 31st, three days after the kidnapping had been reported to the Leflore County Sheriff’s department and to Till’s family in Chicago.

Barbed wire had been wrapped around his neck and tied to the cotton gin fan, which had become snagged on a tangled river root. There was a bullet in the boys skull, one eye was gouged out, and his forehead was crushed in on one side.

Milam and Bryant had been charged with kidnapping before the gruesome corpse had been discovered. They were now charged with murder. The speed of the indictment surprised many. But white Mississippi officials and newspapers said that all "decent" people were outraged at what had happened and that justice would be done. Milam and Bryant could not find a local white lawyer to take their case. The Mississippi establishment seemed to be turning its back on them.

Meanwhile, the tortured, distended body pulled from the river became the focus of attention. It was so badly mangled that Mose Wright could identify the boy only by an initialed ring.The Sheriff wanted to bury the decomposing body quickly. But Curtis Jones called Chicago, passing word to Till’s mother first of Emmett Till’s death and then the of the imminent burial. She demanded that the corpse be sent back to Chicago. The Sheriff’s office reluctantly agreed, but had the mortician sign an order that the casket was not to be opened.