August 1955

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi on August 28, 1955, by white men who accused him of whistling at a white woman. His mother Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and the photographs of his mutilated body published in Jet magazine shocked the nation and the world. The acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury and the subsequent public outrage radicalized a generation of civil rights activists and is considered a pivotal catalyst for the movement.

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white woman. His mother Mamie Till insisted on an open casket funeral, exposing the world to the horror of racist violence. The acquittal of his killers outraged the nation and is widely cited as a catalyst for the civil rights movement.