Emmett Till

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois to Louis and Mamie Till. When Emmett was four, he and his mother got word that his father, a soldier stationed in Italy during World War II, had been executed by the government (it wasn't revealed until many years later that his father was convicted by a court martial of the rape and murder of three Italian women, sentenced to death and subsequently hanged). Emmett was raised by his mother and grandmother and, in his early years, was said to have been a happy, normal young man who excelled at science and art in school and was known to love jokes. In 1955, his great-uncle Mose Wright came up from Mississippi for a funeral and, at that time, invited young Emmett back to Mississippi with him for a vacation. Unaware of the strict rules of segregation enforced in Mississippi, Emmett made the fatal mistake of paying improper attention to Carolyn Bryant, the wife of a white store owner. Though accounts vary, history has agreed