Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America by Mamie Till Mobley

What I Have Seen

This book was so much more for me than I ever could have imagined. It has shown me so many things.

Its shown me a mother’s love. Its shown me how to love. How to be a better daughter. How to show my mother the care and respect that she deserves for nurturing and teaching me. Its shown me just how strong and enduring a mother’s love is for a child.

“We were two people who had lived as one.”

This book has shown me how to treat others, how we have a responsibility to look out for one another.

This book has shown me how a supreme sacrifice for us all galvanized generations of people and allows us all to live with a few more comforts today.

This book has shown me that our history demands deeper study for it is so much more than Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and Rosa Parks. Our history is T.R.M. Howard, Lamar Smith, and Reverend George Lee.

This book made me cry. But not the way you’d think. It was the brilliance of her spirit that brought tears to my eyes. It was life, not death that made my eyes well.

I am eternally grateful to Mother Mobley, her courage, her strength, her sacrifice. And I’m so thankful that she was convinced that her story was worth telling.

Inspired

Mamie Till Mobley mentioned several historical monuments in the book including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of what became Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama 1965, Burr Oak Cemetery site of the museum and mausoleum where Emmett Till, his mother Mamie Till Mobley, and her husband, Gene Mobley are buried, and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery Alabama. I have been inspired by Mother Mobley to create a History Edition Bucket List. I want to visit every black historical site in the United States and then the world. all the above mentioned locations are on my list and others including:

The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in New York, New York

National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee

National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, NC

And so on. If there are any historical sites, museums, or monuments that you are aware of or have visited please comment below as I want this list to continue to grow.

*Note: At the time of this writing the mausoleum at the Burr Oak Cemetery has yet to be constructed.