The term Civil rights is often defined as "the rights of citizens to have political and social freedom and equality" (Oxford Dictionary). Civil rights guarantee protection from unlawful discrimination. In history, there have been many events that have led to the creation of civil rights. These events mostly stemmed from actions in response to the Civil Rights Movement, which refers to both a period when African-Americans were working towards genuine equality and a more recent time when the advancement of equality for all citizens is the goal at hand. I have found an example of each definition of the civil rights movement, one being the murder of Emmett Till and the other is the most recent, the Obergefell vs. Hodges Case. The murder of Emmett Till highlighted the issues of both segregation and…show more content… Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago, decided to visit some family in Money, Mississippi. Money, Mississippi was nothing like back home but instead, a place where segregation governed their society. One day, while stopping by a grocery store, he was accused of flirting with the cashier at the time, who happened to be a white woman. After the store owner found out about this, the young man was then kidnapped and brutally murdered on August 28, 1955. The two criminals behind this murder, Milam and Bryant, were found innocent, and even after the truth about Emmett Till's death was released, the government refused to re-open the case. This case led to a significant uproar in inequality and American civil rights. The African American population, in particular, was suffering from extreme racial injustice, and because of this case, many others gained the
