Black History Month – Emmett Till

February 28, 2007 at 5:35 am (Black History)

The most important man to the Civil Rights Movement: Emmett Till

Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American teenager from Chicago, Illinois who was brutally murdered in a region of Mississippi known as the Mississippi Delta in the small town of Money in Leflore County. His murder was one of the key events that energized the nascent American Civil Rights Movement. The main suspects for the crime–both caucasian men–were acquitted, but later admitted to committing the crime. Till’s mother had an open casket funeral to let everyone see how her son had been brutally killed. He had been shot and beaten; he was then thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire to work as a weight. His body remained in the river for three days until it was discovered and retrieved by two fishermen.

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