A 14-Year-Old Boy Who Changed the Course of American History

The story of Emmett Till is a stark and heartbreaking chapter in American history. In 1955, Emmett, a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago, traveled to visit family in Money, Mississippi. There, he was accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a grocery store. Days later, her husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, abducted Emmett from his relatives’ home, brutally beat and murdered him, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. When his mother, Mamie Ti