Fourteen-year-old African-American Emmett Till is brutally murdered after reportedly flirting with a white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Both black and white reporters cover the trial epitomizing “one of the most shocking and enduring stories of the twentieth century.”2 The white defendants, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, are acquitted by an all-white jury in only 67 minutes; later they describe in full detail to Look magazine (which paid them $4,000) how they killed Till.3 His mother insists on an open casket at the funeral, and the powerful image of his mutilated body sparks a strong reaction across the country and the world.
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The Emmett Till Murder
In August 1955, a 14-year-old black boy named Emmett Till from Chicago visited his relatives in Money, Mississippi, and was brutally murdered by whites, who said he whistled at a married white woman. Moses Newson, an African American reporter, covered the Till trial and subsequent not-guilty jury verdict. Newson says…Tags
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