This summer, videos of Black people killed by police officers have sparked outrage and protests across the country. 65 years ago, it was a photograph that shocked the nation. The image of 14-year-old Emmett Till.
Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family, when he was kidnapped, horribly beaten and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie river. Today, Emmett Till’s death is considered the spark that ignited the burgeoning Civil Rights movement.
But few people know there was another brazen murder of a Black man that happened just three months later, in a neighboring town in the Delta. Today on the Radio Diaries Podcast, we tell the forgotten story of Clinton Melton.
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Music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Working, Then And Now
The Longest Game
Rumble Strip: Finn and the Bell
The Almost Astronaut
The General Slocum
The End of Smallpox
The Story of Jane
The Greatest Songwriter You've Never Heard Of
Identical Strangers
Sofia's Choice: A Ukrainian Diary
The Forgotten Story of Clinton Melton
Claudette Colvin: Making Trouble Then and Now
A Voicemail Valentine
Diary of a Saudi Girl: Then & Now
A Museum of Sound
A Real Life West Side Story
A Guitar, A Cello, and the Day that Changed Music
A Wrench in the Works
My Iron Lung
When Borders Move
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