The Emmett Till story is very heart wrenching for me because it showed how cruel the Jim Crow Era really was. For a young boy to be tortured to such an extreme, and then killed in that manner just because he was accused of just whistling at a white woman. At that point black people were not regarded as humans, because hatred and racism blinded most.
In Southern Horrors Ida B. Wells highlighted that such acts were done just to validate white supremacy and most of the men accused of rape were not given trial, and some were even taken out of jail to be killed. The white people saw it as the only way to restore white rule. In cases where the sexual encounters did occur, they were mostly consensual but the white women in question, were often forced to talk about rape, and if they refused they were shunned. On the other hand, it was perfectly fine for a white man to seduce a black woman as well as they don’t try to marry them.
The worst people in these situations were not those doing the violence and lynching but those who sat there and did nothing- choosing to stay ignorant. Many in the North ignored the true conditions that a lot of black people were going through, and though many black people moved to the North for better opportunities, they still met with racism.