Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American boy who, at 14 years old, was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement. Till was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. During summer vacation in August 1955, he was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Till spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the white, married proprietor of a local grocery store. Although what happened at the store is a matter of dispute, Till was accused of flirting with, touching, or whistling at Bryant. Till's interaction with Bryant, perhaps unwittingly, violated the unwritten code of...