Like there was this band in the 80s in Kansas City called the Sin City Disciples...
J/K!!!
Long before Rosa Parks or lunch counter sit-ins, The Emmitt Till murder and trial had a huge role in the genesis of the Civil Rights movement. The whole trial might never have happened if Till's Great Uncle
Mose Wright hadn't first told the police who took the boy that night and been willing to stand up and testify in court.
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In August 1955, a fourteen year old boy went to visit relatives near Money, Mississippi. Intelligent and bold, with a slight mischievous streak, Emmett Till had experienced segregation in his hometown of Chicago, but he was unaccustomed to the severe segregation he encountered in Mississippi. When he showed some local boys a picture of a white girl who was one of his friends back home and bragged that she was his girlfriend, one of them said, "Hey, there's a [white] girl in that store there. I bet you won't go in there and talk to her." [15] Emmett went in and bought some candy. As he left, he said "Bye baby" to Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the store owner.
Although they were worried at first about the incident, the boys soon forgot about it. A few days later, two men came to the cabin of Mose Wright, Emmett's uncle, in the middle of the night. Roy Bryant, the owner of the store, and J.W. Milam, his brother-in-law, drove off with Emmett. Three days later, Emmett Till's body was found in the Tallahatchie River. One eye was gouged out, and his crushed-in head had a bullet in it. The corpse was nearly unrecognizable; Mose Wright could only positively identify the body as Emmett's because it was wearing an initialed ring.
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There were many other witnesses in the house that night, including the boy's father, who were too afraid to say anything. It just wasn't done, ever. Which is why the mob of white men felt free enough to brazenly snatch him like that in the first place.
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The prosecution had trouble finding witnesses willing to testify against the two men. At that time in Mississippi, it was unheard of for a black to publicly accuse a white of committing a crime. Finally, Emmett's sixty-four year old uncle Mose Wright stepped forward. When asked if he could point out the men who had taken his nephew that dark summer night, he stood, pointed to Milam and Bryant, and said "Dar he" -- "There he is." Wright's bravery encouraged other blacks to testify against the two defendants. All had to be hurried out of the state after their testimony.
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I see him to the civil rights movement as something like those first soldiers over the bluffs at Omaha beach. Someone else probably was going to come along and do it. But he was one of the first who actually did.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesont...ut/pt_101.html