At the high point of Reconstruction,” according to professor Chandler Davidson, “About two thirds of black males cast ballots in presidential and gubernatorial contests.” In the 1890s and first years of the twentieth century, “the doors to black political participation were forcefully slammed shut,” and African American male voter registration plummeted into the single digits in many southern states. By the late 1960s, more than sixty percent of voting age African Americans had registered to vote. What changed in the period from the 1950s to the 1960sthat brought these changes about? AND, who do you think, was most responsible for these changes?
( Per the prompt, your objective in this essay is to craft an argument that assesses the transformations in voting rights for African Americans during the middle of the twentieth century, with particular focus given to answering the following two questions: 1) What changed in the period from the 1950s to the 1960s that brought these changes about? AND 2) Who, do you think, was most responsible for these changes?)
Rules:
1. 3-4 pages
2. Double spaced, 12-point font
3. Standard margins—Approximately 1.25 on left and right margins and 1 on top and bottom
4. In crafting your essay, you will want to construct a clear thesis and draw on evidence from the sources described below.
5. Only use these sources below.
Sources:
1. Reading: Foner, “The Freedom Movement” (pages 968-979) (attachment)
2. Reading: Foner, “The Civil Rights Revolution,” “The Kennedy Years,” “Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency,” and “The Changing Black Movement” (pages 985-1002) (attachment)
3. Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False – The New York Times (attachment)
4. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Voting Rights Act Speech
Link:
5. Brothers in Arms
Link:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1908299
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By Richard Pérez-Peña
Jan. 27, 2017
For six decades, she has been the silent woman linked to one of the
most notorious crimes in the nation’s history, the lynching of
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, keeping her thoughts and
memories to herself as millions of strangers idealized or vilified
her.
But all these years later, a historian says that the woman has
broken her silence, and acknowledged that the most incendiary
parts of the story she and others told about Emmett — claims that
seem tame today but were more than enough to get a black person
killed in Jim Crow-era Mississippi — were false.
The woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, spoke to Timothy B. Tyson, a
Duke University professor — possibly the only interview she has
given to a historian or journalist since shortly after the episode —
who has written a book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” to be
published next week.
In it, he wrote that she said of her long-ago allegations that
Emmett grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward
her, “that part is not true.”
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The revelations were first reported on Friday by Vanity Fair.
As a matter of narrow justice, it makes little difference; true or not,
her claims did not justify any serious penalty, much less death.
The two white men who were accused of murdering Emmett in
1955 — and later admitted it in a Look Magazine interview — were
acquitted that year by an all-white, all-male jury, and so could not
be retried.
They and others suspected of involvement in the killing died long
ago.
But among thousands of lynchings of black people, this one looms
large in the country’s tortured racial history, taught in history
classes to schoolchildren, and often cited as one of the catalysts for
the civil rights movement.
Photographs in Jet Magazine of Emmett’s gruesomely mutilated
body — at a funeral that his mother insisted have an open coffin, to
show the world what his killers had done — had a galvanizing
effect on black America.
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The case has refused to fade, revived in a long list of writings and
works of art, including, recently, “Writing to Save a Life: The Louis
Till File,” a book that unearths the case of Emmett’s father, a
soldier who was executed by the Army on charges of murder and
rape.
The Justice Department began an investigation into the Emmett
Till lynching in 2004, Emmett’s body was exhumed for an autopsy,
and the F.B.I. rediscovered the long-missing trial transcript. But in
2007, a grand jury decided not to indict Ms. Donham, or anyone
else, as an accomplice in the murder.
“I was hoping that one day she would admit it, so it matters to me
that she did, and it gives me some satisfaction,” said Wheeler
Parker, 77, a cousin of Emmett’s who lives near Chicago. “It’s
important to people understanding how the word of a white person
against a black person was law, and a lot of black people lost their
lives because of it. It really speaks to history, it shows what black
people went through in those days.”
Patrick Weems, project coordinator at the Emmett Till Interpretive
Center, a museum in Sumner, Miss., said, “I think until you break
the silence, there is still that implied consent to the false narrative
set forth in 1955.”
“It matters that she recanted,” he added.
Emmett, who lived in Chicago, was visiting relatives in Money, a
tiny hamlet in the Mississippi Delta region when, on Aug. 24, 1955,
he went into a store owned by Roy and Carolyn Bryant, a married
couple, and had his fateful encounter with Ms. Bryant, then 21.
Four days later, he was kidnapped from his uncle’s house, beaten
and tortured beyond recognition, and shot in the head. His body
was tied with barbed wire to a cotton gin fan and thrown into the
Tallahatchie River.
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Roy Bryant and his half brother, J. W. Milam, were arrested and
charged with murder.
What happened in that store is unclear, but it has usually been
portrayed as an example of a black boy from up North unwittingly
defying the strict racial mores of the South at the time. Witnesses
said that Emmett wolf-whistled at Ms. Bryant, though even that
has been called into doubt.
Days after the arrest, Ms. Bryant told her husband’s lawyer that
Emmett had insulted her, but said nothing about physical contact,
Dr. Tyson said. Five decades later, she told the F.B.I. that he had
touched her hand.
But at the trial, she testified — without the jury present — that
Emmett had grabbed her hand, she pulled away, and he followed
her behind the counter, clasped her waist, and, using vulgar
language, told her that he had been with white women before.
“She said that wasn’t true, but that she honestly doesn’t remember
exactly what did happen,” Dr. Tyson said in an interview on Friday.
Ms. Donham, now 82, could not be reached for comment.
Dr. Tyson said that in 2008, he got a call from Ms. Donham’s
daughter-in-law, who said they had liked another book of his, and
wanted to meet him.
It was in that meeting that she spoke to him about the Till case,
saying, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to
him.”
Dr. Tyson said that motivated him to write about the case.
Ms. Donham told him that soon after the killing, her husband’s
family hid her away, moving her from place to place for days, to
keep her from talking to law enforcement.
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She has said that Roy Bryant, whom she later divorced, was
physically abusive to her.
“The circumstances under which she told the story were coercive,”
Dr. Tyson said. “She’s horrified by it. There’s clearly a great burden
of guilt and sorrow.
Devery S. Anderson, author of a 2015 history, “Emmett Till: The
Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights
Movement,” said, “I’ve encountered so many people who want
someone be punished for the crime, to have anyone still breathing
held responsible, and at this point, that’s just her.”
But what matters now, he said, is the truth. It has been clear for
decades that she lied in court, he said, “to get it from her own
mouth after so many years of silence is important.”
For his part, Mr. Parker, a pastor, said he harbors no ill will toward
Ms. Donham, and hopes that her admission brings her peace.
“I can’t hate,” he said. “Hate destroys the hater, too. That’s a heavy
burden to carry.”
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Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till
Murder Tells Historian Her Claims
Were False
Carolyn Bryant Donham in 1955. Gene Herrick/Associated Press
Emmett Till was 14 when he was killed in 1955. Associated Press
Emmett Till’s mother at his funeral in 1955. She had insisted that the coffin be open, to
show the world what his killers had done. Chicago-Sun Times, via Associated Press
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