The story of Emmett Till, a 14-year old black boy from Chicago who was lynched in 1955, is a shameful chapter in American history. Many of you know about it, but I’ll briefly give the salient facts. Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when the white wife of a local grocery-store owner told locals that Till had entered the store and whistled at her, flirted with her, and grabbed her. (Details vary, and she admitted later that she made at least part of the story up. It may be entirely fabricated.)
Flirting with a white woman was effectively a capital crime in the South at that time, and two white men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, abducted Till, beat him severely, shot him, and then tossed his body, weighted down with a fan, into the Tallahatchie River. His disfigured corpse was recovered three days later and returned to…
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The Logical Place 