Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the only child of Louis and Mamie Till. In August 1955, while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was accused of offending Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who owned a local grocery store. The exact nature of the incident is disputed, but it involved Till allegedly whistling at or making advances toward Bryant, which violated the racial codes of the Jim Crow South at the time
. A few days after the incident, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam abducted Till, brutally beat and mutilated him, then shot him in the head and disposed of his body in the Tallahatchie River. His body was found three days later
. The two men were tried by an all-white, all-male jury and acquitted. They later confessed to the murder in a magazine interview
. Till's murder and the subsequent miscarriage of justice drew national and international attention to the violent racial persecution of African Americans in the United States and became a catalyst for the emerging civil rights movement
. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, famously held an open-casket funeral to show the world the brutality of the crime, further galvanizing public outrage
. In summary, Emmett Till is remembered as a tragic symbol of racial violence and injustice in America whose death helped spark the civil rights movement
