The media played an important role in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In the past, people could only use newspapers and the radio to find out about current events. However, suddenly most people had televisions in their homes, allowing them to easily and instantly view live footage of events. Due to its growing influence, the media shaped the opinions of many Americans and therefore, as it became an ally of civil rights, this meant that it played a very important role in advancing the cause civil rights. This essay will examine the extent to which the media played an important role in advancing the cause of civil rights, through the examination of three important events:; the murder of Emmett Till, the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the Freedom Rides in the South. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black teenager from Chicago who was murdered in 1955 while visiting family in Mississippi. Till was brutally murdered by three white men because he allegedly flirted with a married white woman. Till's attackers forced him to carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the Tallahatchie River where they then stripped him naked and beat him to death, then gouged out his eyes, shot him in the head and threw him into the river, along with his body. attached to cotton gin fan. The trial, held before an all-white jury in a separate courthouse in Mississippi, found both men "not guilty"; This verdict angered many people across the country. The Emmett Till murder case may have been the first large-scale media event of the civil rights movement, and media coverage throughout the trial of the case marked a turning point in coverage and representation of blacks by the white American press. Local and national newspapers helped transform a current event into a powerful symbol. For most Mississippi newspapers, the Till story quickly became a case of undue outside influence, with the NAACP, Mamie Till, black residents of Chicago, and the Northern press all trying to tell Mississippi how to run its affairs , particularly with regard to justice. and race relations. Houck and Grindy believe that white Mississippians were initially willing to pursue the murderers of Emmett Till, but this changed when they began to feel threatened by the "unwarranted intrusions of the Northern press"[1], arguing that Mississippi newspapers became deeply defensive after receiving attacks on their media outlets. own values. This suggests that newspapers had considerable influence on public opinion in white Mississippi. The language used by newspapers played an important role in the media's role in promoting the cause of civil rights. The language used in newspapers is often biased towards the market they are writing towards, and word choice can influence what the reader sees and how they write. the reader visualizes an event. For example, the white press in Mississippi described Carolyn Bryant as a “pretty young woman of 21, married with two children”[2]; Houck and Grindy argue that on the surface this is innocent, but when combined with the description of Mamie Till, "a 33-year-old divorced mother, a little chubby"[3], it becomes rather sinister andmisleading. The Mississippi Press reported the events of Emmett Till's murder in a way that influenced its readers to adopt Southern views, showing that not all aspects of the media advanced the cause of civil rights . Sympathetic images of Till were published on many front pages of Mississippi newspapers early in the case, but the use of words was used to negatively exaggerate the case in the newspapers. The Greenwood Morning Star used the term "Till attempted rape case"[4] to describe the trial, transforming Till's actions from playful wolf whistling to attempted rape within weeks, as if he was trying to justify the killing and address Southerners' fear of interracial sex. In the weeks leading up to the trial, media coverage was enormous, with influential African-American weeklies like the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier publishing vehement condemnations of injustice in the South. More than a hundred press representatives from across America and the world attended the trial. After the trial ended, African American newspapers and magazines, with the support of the Northern white press, called for national protests and boycotts. The real question that remained after this investigation was whether or not it was possible for blacks to obtain justice in Mississippi. The media managed to galvanize the country with reporting on the Emmett Till affair. In 1987, the producers of the documentary The Eyes on The Prize marked Emmett to death as the start of the civil rights movement. The media's role in uncovering this brutal murder helped advance civil rights and produce future activists like Anne Moody and Eldridge Cleaver. Radio is another form of media that plays an important role in furthering the cause of civil rights. This medium played a fundamental role in the dissemination of Bob Dylan's song "The Death of Emmett Till"[5], which explicitly described the events of Emmett Till's murder and the trial that followed. The song had a great influence because it was written and performed by Bob Dylan, an already popular folk singer, which allowed its message to be transmitted to a large number of people and, therefore, arouse great awareness of injustice. The song was very effective in describing the tragic murder of Emmett Till; the use of terms such as "tortured", "screaming" and "bloody red rain" generates sympathy as it depicts Till as a helpless victim and evokes a vivid image of the horror he was forced to endure . Bob Dylan intended to instill guilt and shame into people who refused to condemn racial violence and hate crimes such as the death of Emmett Till, which may therefore have encouraged many to begin to support the cause of civil rights. He ends the song on a more positive note, suggesting that the civil rights movement could progress further if people "gave all they could give"; this message may have played an important role in furthering the cause of civil rights. Magazines were also an influential form of media during the civil rights movement, and one in particular played an important role in reporting the story of Emmett Till's death. An issue of Jet Magazine, published less than a month after the lynching, evoked sympathy through the graphic description of the state in which Till's body was found, for example, "his face was crushed to the bone ". The sympathy evoked by the powerful language used in this article may have motivated people to become more involved in the movementcivil rights. This sympathy may have been amplified by the graphic images of Till's "beaten" corpse used in the article, because they explicitly reveal this. the horror Till suffered; Additionally, these images are placed alongside images of grieving family members, which can elicit feelings of empathy in people with sons and grandsons. This empathy may have created a sense of connection with black people that many white people had not felt before, and it may have influenced them to support the civil rights movement. Overall, this article serves to shock and inform its readers, and its effective use of language and images along with the wide availability of this form of media may have meant that this article was extremely important to the advancement of the cause of civil rights. The Till affair gave America a harsh and inescapable glimpse into racial violence and injustice. Through newspapers, television, magazines, pictures, and radio, media reporting on the Till affair played an important role in advancing the cause of civil rights. In May 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas. The court unanimously ruled that “separate but equal” public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. The Brown case was a catalyst for the advancement of civil rights, inspiring educational reform but also challenging segregation in all areas of society. The court effectively overturned the famous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, which authorized racial segregation under the guise of “separate but equal.” The case made newspaper and television headlines across America and the world. By 1957, the NAACP had enlisted nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock High School. However, it is argued that the Brown v. Board decision was one of the least important events of the civil rights movement as it related to the media; Klarman suggests that media coverage of civil rights events such as the Brown case attracted "little attention"[6] compared to protests that produced confrontations and violence. This suggests that media coverage of the Brown case was not a major factor in the Brown case. advancing the civil rights cause, because Brown did not make Northerners more sympathetic to the movement. Klarman states that "the percentage of respondents identifying civil rights as the nation's most pressing issue increased after the Montgomery bus boycott, not after Brown,"[7] suggesting that the lack of attention from the Press or obvious human pain did not create an increase in the number of respondents. public attention. However, the Brown case indirectly contributed to the advancement of civil rights by appealing to people's moral conscience. After the United States Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision against the "separate but equal" mandate, black newspapers and magazines reported with joy and pride on the decision, hailing it as the most significant event to date. day for the cause of civil rights. On May 22, 1954, Age magazine reported that hours after the decision hit the airwaves, area residents were still stunned by the "milestone" they had just experienced in the civil rights movement. . This suggests that, despite all the jubilation, was shocked by the monumental unanimous decision. In Atlanta, the 'Daily World' hoped that this decision would contribute toset off a chain reaction within the civil rights movement. Newspapers across America reported the matter, as well as the Southern reaction, revealing that the unanimous decision was not one that pleased all of America. Many Southerners believed that if children lived in an environment without segregation, they would learn about each other, date, and eventually marry, which is the strongest taboo in the South. Time magazine reported Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin's remarks. He reportedly said he was committed to maintaining segregation in Georgia schools "through thick and thin" and promised blood would flow in the streets before allowing white children to attend school with black children ; this suggests that although the media was an important tool in the advancement of civil rights, reports like this would not have advanced the cause of civil rights. Brown v. Board was not the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, but there is no doubt that it was a watershed moment in the fight for racial equality in America. In May 1961, thirteen African-American and white civil rights activists launched the Freedom Movement. Rides; this was a series of bus trips across the southern United States to protest segregation at interstate bus stations. The Freedom Riders, recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), attempted to integrate bus station facilities in the Deep South. The group faced enormous violence from white protesters along the route, but it also brought national and international attention to the civil rights cause. The following months saw hundreds of Freedom Riders engage in similar actions. In September 1961, the International Trade Committee issued regulations prohibiting segregation in the country's bus and train stations. Media coverage of the Freedom Rides throughout the protests was extensive and extremely important in helping the cause of civil rights in the United States. The Freedom Rides were successful, in large part because they were able to engage the media and gain a sympathetic national audience. Photographers and journalists from the black press were allowed to accompany passengers on buses. Initial coverage of the Freedom Rides was either mixed or strongly negative, with some parts of the media accusing the riders of being outside agitators. It was not until May 14, 1961 that the media began to play a significant role in advancing the cause of civil rights through its coverage of the Freedom Rides. Images of a burning bus, photographs of beatings during the riot, and James Peck lying in a hospital bed shocked the nation because they were unlike anything seen previously. Accounts of the Freedom Rides in the white Southern press remained very negative and mocking. At the same time, national media coverage became more favorable in the days following these images. Television was an important form of media that played an important role in advancing the cause of civil rights. Not only was television able to project footage of the rides and footage of the aftermath, but it was also able to broadcast emotional and sympathetic interviews to present the civil rights cause in a positive light to its viewers. This media played a fundamental role in the broadcast of the interviews. with some members of the Civil Rights Movement. These interviews would strengthen the cause of civil rights and when Jim Peck was interviewed about.