The most important formative event in Anne's early life was the murder of a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago named Emmett Till. He was murdered in Mississippi while visiting relatives, and Anne heard fellow students speaking about it right before she entered high school. She then realized that she had spent so much time with her head in a schoolbook that she had not been aware of what was happening around her.
When Anne...
The most important formative event in Anne's early life was the murder of a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago named Emmett Till. He was murdered in Mississippi while visiting relatives, and Anne heard fellow students speaking about it right before she entered high school. She then realized that she had spent so much time with her head in a schoolbook that she had not been aware of what was happening around her.
When Anne left her house later that same day to work for a white woman named Mrs. Burke, her mother told her not to mention Emmett Till, which made Anne wonder why her mother was so frightened. When Anne was at work, Mrs. Burke told her that Emmett Till was killed because he was from the North and did not know his place in Mississippi. From these experiences, Anne learned about racial injustice and the fear that white people tried to instill in African Americans. Anne writes, "Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me—the fear of being killed just because I was black." This event shaped her identity and her activism in later years.
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