Her first brush with racial discrimination was at the age of 12
Before Mamie Till-Mobley became actively involved in the civil rights movement during her adult years, her first experience of racial discrimination was at the preteen age of 12. In her mind, the liberties and rights she enjoyed in Chicago were the same everywhere, but when she felt her grandparents needed real toilet paper instead of the Sears, Roebuck, & Co. catalog they were using, she thought of walking into the readily available segregated drug store in Mississippi.
According to sources, she had the rude shock of her life when she was turned away by the store owner with the suggestion that she considers using a corncob as many working-class blacks do. Feeling insulted, she felt the urge to speak out, but she learned the most important lesson many young black children her age had grown to discover in their time, racial segregation was in full swing.
Struggling to grasp what she had learned from her experience, her grandfather helped her to understand that she lived at a time the odds were against African Americans, who were at the receiving end of racial injustice. Her Family Home was an emblem of safety for blacks who had escaped from racial injustices in the South
Due to the racial climate at the time, a culture among black families was to live close to one another. Chicago was the safe haven for many African Americans who were fleeing from the Jim Crow laws of the South, and Mamie’s family was no exception. However, their home became the gathering place for black people. It was eventually called “Little Mississippi” because it provided a safety net for African Americans who had relocated from the South to Chicago. Mamie described that aspect of her life as the “Ellis Island of Chicago” because of how receptive they were to black migrants, according to the mosaic theatre.
