Emmett Till

On August 28, 1955, two white men beat to death Emmet Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy from Chicago who was visiting relatives in Mississippi.  Till had reportedly flirted (events are disputed) with the white wife of one of the murderers at a local grocery store. The killing took place four nights after the incident at Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, when Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam, broke into the home where Till was staying and drove him to a barn, where they beat him, gouged out one of his eyes, and shot him, the dropped his body in the Tallahatchie River.  His body was discovered three days later.

At Till's public funeral in Chicago, and in images appearing across the nation, thousands saw Till's severely mutilated body, drawing attention to the problem of lynching and new support for protection of civil rights for blacks in the Deep South.  Bryant and Milam were tried for the murder of till in late 1955, but acquitted by an all-white Mississippi jury. Protected by the double jeopardy clause, Bryant and Milam admitted killing Till in a 1956 magazine interview.  The widely publicized trial is considered apivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement.

Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Mobley, insisted on an open casket during his funeral

Image of the courtroom during the trial