Saint Louis University School of Law Scholarship Commons All Faculty Scholarship 2009 The ioleV nt Bear it Away: Emmett iT ll & the Modernization of Law Enforcement in Mississippi Anders Walker Saint Louis University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/faculty Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Criminal Law Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Walker, Anders, The ioV lent Bear it Away: Emmett iT ll & the Modernization of Law Enforcement in Mississippi (October 27, 2008). San Diego Law Review, Vol. 46, p. 459, 2009. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Commons. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY EMMETT TILL & THE MODERNIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT IN MISSISSIPPI ∗ ANDERS WALKER ABSTRACT Few racially motivated crimes have left a more lasting imprint on American memory than the death of Emmett Till. Yet, even as Till’s murder in Mississippi in 1955 has come to be remembered as a catalyst for the civil rights movement, it contributed to something else as well. Precisely because it came on the heels of the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Till’s death convinced Mississippi Governor James P. Coleman that certain aspects of the state’s handling of racial matters had to change. Afraid that popular outrage over racial violence might encourage federal intervention in the region, Coleman removed power from local sheriffs, expanded state police, and modernized the state’s criminal justice apparatus in order to reduce the chance of further racial violence in the state.