Civil rights movement

=== Emmett Till's murder, 1955 ===
{{Main|Emmett Till}}

[[File:Emmett Till's funeral - mourners.jpg|thumb|190px|[[Emmett Till]]'s mother Mamie (middle) at her son's funeral in 1955. He was killed by white men after a white woman accused him of offending her in her family's grocery store.]]
[[Emmett Till]], a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, visited his relatives in [[Money, Mississippi]], for the summer. He allegedly had an interaction with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a small grocery store that violated the norms of Mississippi culture, and Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam brutally murdered young Emmett Till. They beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the&nbsp;[[Tallahatchie River]]. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. After Emmett's mother, [[Mamie Till]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; The Murder of Emmett Till; Interview with Mamie Till Mobley, mother of Emmett Till|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-707wm14m9k|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> came to identify the remains of her son, she decided she wanted to "let the people see what I have seen".<ref name="timephoto"/> Till's mother then had his body taken back to Chicago where she had it displayed in an open casket during the funeral services where many thousands of visitors arrived to show their respects.<ref name="timephoto"/> A later publication of an image at the funeral in ''[[Jet (magazine)|Jet]]'' is credited as a crucial moment in the civil rights era for displaying in vivid detail the violent racism that was being directed at black people in America.<ref name="Weller"/><ref name="timephoto">{{Cite web |url=http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson |title=How The Horrific Photograph Of Emmett Till Helped Energize The Civil Rights Movement |website=100 Photographs {{!}} The Most Influential Images of All Time|access-date=July 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170706123149/http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson|archive-date=July 6, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> In a column for ''[[The Atlantic]]'', Vann R. Newkirk wrote: "The trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of [[white supremacy]]".<ref name="Atlantic" /> The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an [[all-white jury]].<ref>Whitfield, Stephen (1991). ''A Death in the Delta: The story of Emmett Till''. pp 41–42. JHU Press. {{ISBN?}}</ref>

"Emmett's murder," historian Tim Tyson writes, "would never have become a watershed historical moment without Mamie finding the strength to make her private grief a public matter."<ref name="USA TODAY">{{Cite news |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2017/01/30/the-blood-of-emmett-till-timothy-b-tyson-book-review/97058060/ |title='The Blood of Emmett Till' remembers a horrific crime |work=USA Today |access-date=July 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170807054440/https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2017/01/30/the-blood-of-emmett-till-timothy-b-tyson-book-review/97058060/ |archive-date=August 7, 2017 |url-status=live }}</ref> The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S.<ref name="Atlantic" /> The murder and resulting trial ended up markedly impacting the views of several young black activists.<ref name="USA TODAY" /> [[Joyce Ladner]] referred to such activists as the "Emmett Till generation."<ref name="USA TODAY" /> One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.<ref name="haas"/> Parks later informed Till's mother that her decision to stay in her seat was guided by the image she still vividly recalled of Till's brutalized remains.<ref name="haas">{{Cite book |title=The Assassination of Fred Hampton |last=Haas |first=Jeffrey |publisher=Chicago Review Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-56976-709-2 |location=Chicago |page=17}}</ref> The glass topped casket that was used for Till's Chicago funeral was found in a cemetery garage in 2009. Till had been reburied in a different casket after being exhumed in 2005.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/10/authorities-discover-original-casket-of-emmett-till|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090913122859/http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/10/authorities-discover-original-casket-of-emmett-till/|archive-date=September 13, 2009|title=Authorities discover original casket of Emmett Till|date=September 13, 2009|work=archive.is|access-date=September 30, 2018}}</ref> Till's family decided to donate the original casket to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Culture and History, where it is now on display.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/emmett-tills-casket-goes-to-the-smithsonian-144696940/|title=Emmett Till's Casket Goes to the Smithsonian|last=Callard|first=Abby|work=Smithsonian|access-date=September 30, 2018|language=en}}</ref> In 2007, Bryant said that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her story in 1955.<ref name="Weller">{{cite magazine |last=Weller |first=Sheila |title=How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case |magazine=Vanity Fair |date=January 26, 2017 |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/how-author-timothy-tyson-found-the-woman-at-the-center-of-the-emmett-till-case}}</ref><ref name=TysonNotes>{{cite book |first=Timothy B. |last=Tyson |author-link=Timothy Tyson |title=The Blood of Emmett Till |year=2017 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4767-1486-8 |page=221 |quote=Carolyn Bryant Donham, interview with the author, Raleigh, NC, September 8, 2008.}}</ref>