Emmett Louis Till July 25, β August 28, was a year-old African American youth who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States.
Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement. Till was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. During summer vacation in August , he was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi , in the Mississippi Delta region. Till spoke to year-old Carolyn Bryant, the white, married proprietor of a local grocery store. Although what happened at the store is a matter of dispute, Till was accused of flirting with, touching, or whistling at Bryant.
Till's interaction with Bryant, perhaps unwittingly, violated the unwritten code of behavior for a black male interacting with a white female in the Jim Crow -era South. Milam, who were armed, went to Till's great-uncle's house and abducted Till, age They beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River.
Three days later, Till's mutilated and bloated body was discovered and retrieved from the river. Till's body was returned to Chicago, where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket , which was held at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ.
Her decision focused attention on not only American racism and the barbarism of lynching but also the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the U. Although local newspapers and law enforcement officials initially decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they responded to national criticism by defending Mississippians, giving support to the killers.
