In the early morning of August 28, 1955, in a small Mississippi Delta cotton-mill town along the Tallahatchie River called Money, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy, was abducted from his great-uncle’s home, driven to a nearby barn, brutally beaten, and then shot to death. His naked body, wrapped in barbed wire and tied to a heavy cotton-gin fan, was dumped into the brown slow-moving river, where it lay on the muddy bottom until, three days later, two boys out fishing discovered the mutilated and swollen corpse.
