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Today, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in a barn near Drew, Mississippi. His body was discovered later in the nearby Tallahatchie River. The lynching and subsequent murder occured after Till was kidnapped from his great-uncle's home.

A 1955 article in the Washington Post described young Till as a " wolf-whistling Negro boy."

Till was accused of whistling at a white woman, which precipitated his violent death. The woman who claimed Till whistled, later told a reporter that she had lied.

Below, an image taken by David Jackson of Mamie Till and her future husband, Gene Mobley, as she sees her son's brutalized body. She insisted on her son's casket being open so that the world "could see what they did to my baby."