Death of Innocence Quotes

“With each day, I give thanks for the blessings of life—the blessings of another day and the chance to do something with it. Something good. Something significant. Something helpful. No matter how small it might seem. I want to keep making a difference.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“God told me, “I have taken one from you, but I will give you thousands.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“It is not that I dwell on the past. But the past shapes the way we are in the present and the way we will become what we are destined to become. It is only because I have finally understood the past, accepted it, embraced it, that I can fully live in the moment. And hardly a moment goes by when I don’t think about Emmett, and the lessons a son can teach a mother.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“We are only given a certain amount of time to do what we were sent here to do. You don’t have to be around a long time to share the wisdom of a lifetime. You just have to use your time wisely, efficiently. There is no time to waste.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“So I was just sitting in the dining room feeling sorry for myself. “What am I going to do?” Almost as soon as I asked that question, the answer came. “End it all.” Oh, I don’t know what possessed me. I really don’t have any idea at all. But I got up and walked over to a window. Well, that window was painted shut, so I went to another window. That one led out to a gangway, a stairwell, where I figured no one would find me until my body started to smell. No, that wouldn’t do. I looked at the front windows. One was a picture window that didn’t open, but then I couldn’t jump from those windows on the sides, either. Children played out front and that would be so traumatic for them. Besides, after I thought about it a little more, I realized something else that was very important: I wasn’t wearing pants. I didn’t wear pants back then. I was wearing a dress that Mama had made for me. Oh, I remember that dress. It was sleeveless, real tight in the waist with a long flared skirt. It was a white dress, white with a floral pattern, some kind of design in it, and that design was pink. That was one of my favorite dresses. I couldn’t stand the thought of jumping in that dress. More important, I couldn’t stand the thought that my skirt might fly up. Just then, as I was thinking about all that, the phone rang. It was a reporter. He was thinking about doing a follow-up story on me and he wanted to know what I was planning to do. Well, I couldn’t tell him I was planning to jump out the window. So I said I wanted to go back to school and become a teacher. I turned around as if to ask, “Who said that?” Now, I don’t know to this day where it came from, but he said he would take me to register for classes. I mean, he was just going to carry me down to the college and walk me through it. That was fine with me, because I didn’t even know where to go. I hadn’t exactly given this a whole lot of thought. As it turns out, the place to go was Chicago Teachers College. He took me there and, unfortunately, we were told that registration for classes had just closed. Before I even got a chance to start thinking about those windows back home again, he somehow convinced them to admit just one more student, and that’s how it all started. That’s how I was able to start over. I was going to go to college. I was going to become a teacher. I would be able to work with children, to teach them, to help shape them, to introduce them to a whole world of possibilities. In the process, a whole world of possibilities was opening up to me. Throughout my life I have heard a great many stories about how people received the call to their life’s mission. I have to smile when I recall how I received mine. For me, the call came by phone, from a reporter.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“Move back,” President Clinton said. “Let this mother through. Don’t you know who this is?”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“I have left something of myself in all the children I have touched.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“That is, after all, how it works. We don’t come here with hatred in our hearts. We have to be taught to feel that way. We have to want to be that way, to please the people who teach us to want to be like them. Strange, to think that people might learn to hate as a way of getting some approval, some acceptance, some love. I thought about all that”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy. And the thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children and the children yet unborn.…”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America

“Strong women don’t merely birth children. They cultivate them to render service.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

“So often, the boys would all stand under a lamppost "doo-wopping." Everybody wanted to sing. Everybody wanted to sing lead. Nobody could get it just right. It was the only time they were not in harmony. But this was the fifties, and music was in the air. It was everywhere. For this group of boys standing under a curbside spotlight, the music was off-key, it was out of sync, it was perfect. The grace note of their young lives.”
― Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America