Yesterday on a bright autumn day in Greenwood, MS, a 9-foot tall bronze statue of black teenager Emmett Till was unveiled. Till, 14, was murdered by white racists in August 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in a store not far from Greenwood. He was later kidnapped, tortured and lynched, and his body thrown in the Tallahatchie River, sinking it with an industrial fan. His killers were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, but later admitted that they had tortured and killed him, protected by double jeopardy from being tried again.
His brutal murder, coupled with the injustice of the verdict, ignited the Civil Rights movement in the South. The new film "Till" recounts his murder and the legacy he left.
(photo: Scott Olsen / Getty Images)
