60 years ago today, one of the most outrageous racial crimes in American history occurred in Mississippi, when 14 year old African American Emmett Till of Chicago, visiting relatives, flirted with a white woman, and was murdered by a mob of whites, infuriated at his behavior. They tortured him, beat him to a pulp, and shot him, and dragged his body, one of the worst examples of lynching that went on for many decades in the South, without any accountability.
Eight years later, we had the March on Washington, by a quarter of a million people of all races, and the momentous and historic “I Have A Dream” speech by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, calling for civil rights laws, which would come to pass in 1964 and 1965, but with King being assassinated in 1968.
These two anniversaries should sober us on the unfinished work on race relations, which is so evident in 2015, with the racial divide still massive despite progress from the time of Emmett Till!