The Chicago Project

Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American teenager from Chicago, Illinois who was brutally murdered in the small town of Money Mississippi. He was murdered by a group of white men of allegedly whistling at a white woman. His body was thrown in the Tallahatchie River with a seventy five pound cotton gin fan tied to it with barbed wire. His body was amazingly discovered three days later and against all odds was sent back to Chicago. His mother, Mamie Till, demanded that she be able to see the body and definitively identify it as only a mother could. His face was so brutally disfigured that it was almost unrecognizable.

 

Mamie Till decided to have an open casket funeral in order that the world could see what hatred had done to her son. Over 60,000 people walked passed the casket during the three days, turning her time of grief into an unexpected major civil rights protest. Pictures of the brutalized face of Emmett Till were soon after published in the popular Jet magazine and seen by African Americans all over the nation. 100 days after the body was discovered, Rosa Parks was arrested and over 50,000 Africa Americans in Montgomery, Alabama organized and boycotted the segregated bus system for over a year. There is no doubt that their unity of purpose was brought forth out of the murder of Emmett Till.