Early Steps in the Civil Rights Movement (1940s and 1950s)

The Reconstruction era, which followed the Civil War, promised to bring political and economic rights to African Americans, but these promises were largely unfulfilled. The 13th, 14, and 15th Amendments were initiated into the Consitution, but society continued to find loopholes in them and racial inequality remained.

#Truman and Civil Rights

Truman was the first modern president to use the powers of his office to challenge racial discrimination. The president used his executive powers to establish the Committee on Civil Rights in 1946. The committee was tasked with investigating and making recommendations on ways to end discrimination and promote civil rights. The committee's report, issued in 1947, called for a number of measures to address racial discrimination, including the elimination of the poll tax, the end of lynching, and the desegregation of the armed forces. He also strengthened the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, which aided the efforts of Black leaders to end segregation in schools.

In 1948, he officially ordered the end of racial discrimination throughout the federal government including the armed forces. Truman urged Congress to create a Fair Employment Practice Commission that would prevent employers from discriminating against the hiring of Black people, but Southern Democrats blocked the legislation.

#Emmett Till

In the summer of 1955, Emmett Till left his home in Chicago to visit his uncle and cousin in Mississippi. Till, who was only 14 years old at the time, and a group of teenagers entered Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market to buy refreshments. Till purchased bubble gum, and in later accounts he was accused of either whistling at, flirting with, or touching the hand of the store's white female clerk—and wife of the owner—Carolyn Bryant.

In the middle of the night, Till was kidnapped and murdered by Bryant's family. They then beat the teenager brutally, dragged him to the bank of the river, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan, and shoved his mutilated body into the water. Three days later, his corpse was pulled out of the river.

Till's body was shipped to Chicago, where his mother opted to have an open-casket funeral with Till's body on display for five days. Thousands of people came to the Roberts Temple Church of God to see the evidence of this brutal hate crime.

Till's mother said that despite the enormous pain it caused her to see her son's dead body on display, she opted for an open-casket funeral in an effort to "let the world see what has happened because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like."

The murder and subsequent trial of Till helped to galvan...