At work, we’re preparing to roll out our new unit on Civil Rights, and I’ve been catching up on all of those things I should have learned in school but, for whatever reason, didn’t. Today, I learned something new about Emmett Till.

What I knew was that Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old African American child who was brutally murdered for the crime of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955. The two killers were acquitted by an all-white jury who either thought the killing was justified, or just couldn’t be bothered to care that it wasn’t.

What I learned today was that the two killers later gave a full confession to Look magazine, which published their account of the killing. The article is being used as a part of our Civil Rights unit, and is available on the PBS website.

I’m not going to quote from it; you really have to read the whole thing. Then, you have to click on the link at the top that says “Letters to the Editor” and read those, because they are even more chilling than the article, in terms of understanding what the times were like.

The cumulative effect of studying myriad injustices across several different civil rights movements in such a short period of time has been sobering. But the most staggering element of all of it is just how recently most of this happened. When you look at all of the injustices in the world today, it’s easy to forget how much progress we’ve actually made. So, it’s been both depressing and inspiring at the same time. I’m curious to see how the kids will take to it all.

By the way, the PBS website is the best website on the entire Internet. Just thought you’d like to know. For more on this story, you can visit their Emmett Till page. If you’re an educator, you’ll want to set aside a weekend to explore their Teacher Source. They also have a page for kids. And there’s much, much more worth checking out, whatever your particular interests may be.