I am ashamed to confess that I had never heard of Emmet Till until earlier this year when I read about movies being made about his murder. Here is the short version of his story, from The Murder of Emmet Till, (David Halberstam, The Fifties, Chapter 29): In August of 1955, Emmet Till, a fourteen year old from Chicago, was sent to visit relatives near Money, Mississippi in Tallahatchie County. The young man, in part to show off to his relatives, allegedly flirted and used sexual language in speaking to a 21 year-old white woman working in a country store owned by her husband Roy Bryant.  A few days later (on Saturday, August 27th),  Till disappeared.  His body was eventually found, wired to an old factory fan, on the bottom of a river. Till had been severely beaten and shot in the head.  Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were arrested and tried for murder.  The trial was the first of many such violent incidents to draw substantial coverage in the national media.  Bryant and Milan were acquitted by an all-white jury although they later sold their story of murdering Till to Look magazine for $4,000.