How old is Emmett Till?

Emmett Till was an African-American teenager who was brutally murdered by a group of people for allegedly offending a white woman, which made a key case for a huge wave of civil right movement in the US. Born Emmett Louis Till in 1941 in Chicago, he was raised by his single mum as his father died when Emmett was 4 years old. In those times he was quite in poor health suffering from polio and stuttering. However, later in his early teen ages Emmett recovered and got in a much better shape. In summer 1955 Till was visiting his relatives in a very small town in Mississippi, where one day he approached Carolyn Bryant and, according to her, expressed some disrespect and said some offensive words to her. A couple of days later Bryant's husband and half-brother abducted the boy and tortured him in a barn. They took out one of his eyes and eventually killed him, after that throwing his body into the River Tallahatchie. Three days later his body was found and the situation attracted plenty of public attention. The body of Emmett Till was delivered to Chicago where he was buried in an opened casket in order to display the terrible torture that the boy had gone through before his death. Unfortunately, the court didn't find the two men guilty, but later on they confessed murdering the boy, as well as Carolyn Bryant confessed fabricating most of the story. The tragic life of the young boy played a key role in the national movement for civil rights and race equality.

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