On August 28, 1955, Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly saying, "bye, baby" to a white woman named Carolyn Bryant in a store in Mississippi. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. Till's body was returned to Chicago. His mother, who had mostly raised him, insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing. This exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention not only on American racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. Till's murder is noted as a important spark to the next phase of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
