Emmett Till

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black American from Chicago who was lynched while visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi. Accused of harassing a white woman, he was brutally lynched by two white men, and his open-casket funeral caused a national outrage against treatment of black Americans in the South.

The lynching
Emmett Till went to a grocery store after arriving to buy candy. Working at the register was 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, wife of Roy Bryant. The next events are unclear and heavily disputed, but it was reported that Till had grabbed her hand, aggressively flirting with her. What is clear is that afterwards, she ran to her car and grabbed a pistol in a panic. Till and his friend left immediately. Upon hearing of the events, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, John Milam, along with a number of other men, raided the house Till was staying at, kidnapping him. They drove to a nearby barn and beat Till with a pistol. Later, they beat him again, drove him to a riverside, and shot him, dropping his body into the water.

National Response
Three days after Emmett Till's murder, his body was found down the river from where he was murdered. His body was severely disfigured, to the point that a controversy about whether the body was Till's broke out. After identification, the body was retrieved and embalmed. Till's mother arranged for an open-casket funeral, to show the world the horrors of lynching and racism. Photos of the body were soon published in magazines around the nation. Millions were shocked and horrified by what had happened to the boy. Both Milam and Roy were taken into custody and charged with kidnapping the day after the murder. Upon discovering the body, they were then charged with murder. The trial occurred several days after the funeral. The all-white jury acquitted both men, and they were free to go. Shortly afterwards, both admitted to murdering Till. The events that transpired directly influenced the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which allowed the Federal Government to intervene in state cases when a possible violation of civil rights was involved.