Eyes on the Prize: Awakenings
"Awakenings" highlights two individual acts of courage that inspired
black Southerners to fight for their rights: Mose Wright's courageous testimony
in the trial of two white men for the murder of Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks'
refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.
Chronology:
August 1955: Emmett Till killed in Money, Mississippi.
September 1955: J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, two white men, accused of the Till
murder and identified by Till's uncle, Mose Wright, in court. Both acquitted.
December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks arrested for not giving up her seat to white man
on Montgomery city bus.
December 5, 1955: Community leaders organize 40,000 Montgomery blacks in one-day
boycott of bus system; community votes to continue protest. Boycott lasts until
December 21, 1956, after US Supreme Court rules Montgomery bus segregation is
unconstitutional.
Key interviews:
Curtis Jones, Emmett Till's cousin
James Hicks, executive editor, Amsterdam News
E.D. Nixon, Montgomery community leader
The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Rufus Lewis, Montgomery Improvement Association
Jo Ann Robinson, Women's Political Council, Montgomery
Coretta Scott King, wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Additional Links
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/
http://lancefuhrer.com/dylan_emmett_till.htm
http://www.maafa.org/emmett.html
Warning: This is a very graphic site
http://www.mecca.org/~crights/montgomery.html
http://www.tsum.edu/museum/busboycott.htm
http://www.maafa.org/