(somber music)
- [Woman] The murder of Emmett
Till was really thought of
as being one of the primary catalysts
for the civil rights movement.
The willingness of his mother
to have an open casket funeral,
hundreds and hundreds
of black folks file pass
and see this young boy who had been killed
by white supremacists in the South.
To publish those photographs
in black publications
so the entire black
world, like our Facebook
or our Twitter now, right?
So that the whole black world
could see what had happened.
- In the 1950s, Dr. King and
the civil rights movement
used television in this way:
Look, this is what segregation looks like.
These are dogs attacking children.
These are people being fire hosed.
Searching for the medium of technology
that will confirm your experience,
such that your basic
humanity can be recognized.
- The difference now
with somebody can hold up
one of these, get what's going on,
they can put it on YouTube,
and the whole world has to deal with it.
That's what's new.
It's not the protest.
It's not the brutality.
It's the fact that we can
force a conversation about it.
