Who was Emmett Till?

 

Emmett Till was abducted, badly beaten and killed in Mississippi in August of 1955. He was 14. Till was visiting family in Mississippi — which was still racially segregated at the time and had a history of violence against African-Americans — when he was accused of whistling at a white woman. The woman told her husband, Roy Blount, who was enraged and went looking for the boy. He was accompanied by his brother-in-law. Three days later, Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River. He had been beaten and shot. The murder was highly publicized. When Till’s body was returned to his home in Chicago for an open-casket memorial, tens of thousands of mourners attended. The two men stood trial for murder but neither were convicted. A year later, they confessed to a magazine that they killed Emmett, but the case wasn’t reopened. Decades later, Roy’s wife admitted that Emmett never harassed her in the first place. Till and his mother, whose efforts to publicize what happened to her son ensured that his death received national media attention, are the subject of the new movie, “Till.” To check out reviews of the film, hit the link in our bio. #emmetttill #till #movies #history #racism #mississippi #racialjustice #ushistory #ushistoryclass #shorts