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In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends...
EMMETT TILL
Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement...
MEDGAR EVARS
Dropping out of high school at 17 to join the army, Evers served in World War II. Returning home, he finished high school and later graduated from Alcorn A & M College. After working at Magnolia Mutual Insurance, one of the few black-owned businesses in the state, Evers became an NAACP field secretary in Jackson. His civil rights work made him many enemies, and on June 11, 1963, Evers was shot and killed by white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith. His wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams, carried on his work.
VIOLA LIUZZO
A white mother of five who had been raised in the South, was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members after she participated in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery...
JIMMY LEE JACKSON
On 18th February 1965, Jackson, his mother, Viola Jackson, and grandfather, eighty-two year old Cager Lee Jackson, took part in a protest demonstration led by Reverend C. T. Vivian in favor of African American voter registration. State troopers attacked the marchers and both Jackson's mother and grandfather were hit with billy clubs. When Jackson went to help them he was shot in the stomach by a state trooper. Jackson was arrested and charged with assault and battery before being taken to hospital.
Jimmie Lee Jackson died of his wounds on the 26th of February, 1965...
JAMES BYRD, JR.
James Byrd, Jr. was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death on a rural East Texas road in early June of 1998...His arm and head were severed during this brutal and viscious slaying...
JAMES E. CHENEY, ANDREW GOODMAN
and MICHAEL SCHWERNER...
The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—were found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them...
MICHAEL DONALD
Michael Donald was spotted walking home from getting his sister a pack of cigarettes by KKK members Henry Hayes and James Knowles...They beat him with a tree limb before cutting his throat and hanging him from a tree...
RUBIN STACY
Rubin Stacy was lynched in Fort Lauderdale on 19th of July, 1935...he was a homeless tenant farmer...he was starving, and had gone to the house to ask for food; the woman became frightened and screamed when she saw Stacy's face...The woman brought charges against him and while 6 deputies were escorting him to jail, he was taken by a white mob and hanged by the side of the womans' home...
JESSE WASHINGTON
A postcard showing the burned body of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas, 1916. Washington, a 17-year-old retarded farmhand who had confessed to raping and killing a white woman, was castrated, mutilated, and burned alive by a cheering mob including mayor and the chief of police. An observer wrote that "Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks... [he] was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire... Wailing, the boy attempted to climb up the skillet hot chain. For this, the men cut off his fingers." This image is from a postcard, which said on the back, "This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe..."
On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a week before the bombing he had told the New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals."A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.
