This Day in the Yesteryear: LYNCHING OF 14-YEAR-OLD BOY HELPS INSPIRE US CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1955)

Lynching of 14-Year-Old Boy Helps Inspire US Civil Rights Movement (1955)

At age 14, African-American Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi after reportedly whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a grocery store. Her husband and his half-brother beat Till, shot him in the head, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighing it down by tying a metal fan around his neck with barbed wire. Till’s body was pulled from the river three days later. What decision made by Till’s mother about her son’s funeral helped bring attention to his brutal murder? More… Discuss