Awakening of Mamie Till-Mobley : Examining Resiliency within Personal Tragedy Transformed to Activism

Abstract

Mamie Till-Mobley was the mother of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy who was brutally murdered in the summer of 1955 by white men who, despite confessing to the crime, were never convicted. Our faculty/student collaborative research delved into Till-Mobley's life to learn how she embraced activism as a response to her personal tragedy. Our research seeks to lay a foundation of how an activist's response to a tragic event can contribute to broader understandings of patterns of tragedy-linked activism among women and the role, if any, their resilience plays in the process.