Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Emmett Till's Open Casket Funeral Reignited the Civil Rights Movement

"Sixty years ago Jet magazine published photos of the disfigured and decomposed body of slain 14-year-old African American Emmett Till, rattling communities across the country and reigniting a widespread passion for the Civil Rights Movement. These photos were undeniably important to the dissemination of the story of Till’s murder, but it is the actions of young mother Mamie Till Mobley that pushed her son’s tragic death into the international spotlight.
When Mamie held an open casket funeral on September 3, 1955, she urged the world to look at her son’s beaten, swollen body. The body, which was so disfigured that he was only identifiable by the initials on a ring on his finger, was viewed by thousands of people and photographed and published in newspapers and magazines..."
Emmett Till

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