“It’s unbelievable that someone can do that to another human being,” Wright said. Police found Emmett’s body floating in a river seven days later -- so badly beaten that his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, could barely identify him. And she did just that. Beauchamp has spent the last 25 years on a quest for both, unearthing new details about Till’s death that he’s revealing in an upcoming feature film. Both men were free.Moses Wright's testimony in the trial of his great-nephew's killers stands as one of the bravest moments in American history.The sight of Emmett Till's brutalized body pushed many who had been content to stay on the sidelines directly into the fight for civil rights.From left: Walter Reed, Willie Reed, Mrs. Mamie Bradley, mother of Emmett Till, Michigan congressman Charles Diggs, Dr. T.R.M. 1. had a well-attended open-casket funeral 2. had a publication of photos in the black press of her dead son 3. she had a speaking tour sponsored by the NAACP .

In 1955, Mamie Till was unwillingly thrust into American history. “Emmett said nothing out of line. Her historic stand caused an outrage, a boycott, and eventually a movement that would forever change the life of African-Americans in the South, and it was all influenced by the murder of a boy who was only 14 years old.Mamie Till was more than just an onlooker in Emmett Till’s heartbreaking story; she was one of the few people who were influential in his short life. “I saw his tongue had been choked out and it was lying down on his chin,” she told him. What was Mamie Tills explanation on why she had an open-casket funeral?

Police found Emmett’s body floating in a river seven days later -- so badly beaten that his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, could barely identify him.

She spent the years following her son's death continuing her work in the Chicago public schools and organizing tributes in the memory of Emmett. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement. I tell people, I say, ‘I think he wanted us to laugh,’” Wright said. Her love for her son didn’t expire after his death; instead she pushed that love outward.

Retrieved from If you need this or any other sample, we can send it to you via email. The National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of 10 critical sites in American civil rights history Emmett had only been murdered 100 days earlier. Every person involved in bringing Emmett back from Mississippi signed papers to make sure that the box containing his body was not opened. “When you see that photo and you juxtapose it against the video of Rodney King, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile and Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, does it still have the same impact?” Miller asked. In 2005, Till’s body was exhumed, but his casket was left forgotten, until a family member found it and donated it to the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. But Mamie was more than just an author who, like many, was inspired by Emmett; she was a courageous woman who knew Emmett long before he became a symbol of Civil Rights.She was Emmett’s mother, who took care of him as a child, would refuse to have a closed casket funeral for her brutally murdered son and held the strength inside her to inspire many main players in the Civil Rights Movement to stand up and fight for their rights. It’s his chance to finally tell the complete story. Mamie Till-Mobley is the author of Death of Innocence a book documenting the life, death, and legacy of Emmett Till.

Her courage and love in the face of death was inspiring to many who then took it upon themselves to better the African-American way of life.Who Was Mamie Till?.

Mrs. Bryant came out behind us.

Martin Luther King Jr. summoned his memory during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.“This one image conjured the pain, the acrimony of lynching, and showed to America, ’This is what you do to us. Stream CBSN live or on demand for FREE on your TV, computer, tablet, or smartphone. Mamie Till-Mosley shows us, it was the everyday people, the women who were there, working and seeing what was happening to their children, their friends, their families, the women who found they needed to be activists and moved to change the world, who were the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. The murder of her son, Emmett, catapulted the quiet Chicago civil service employee into a lifetime of advocacy, starting with seeking justice for the death of her son.Her father wanted to leave the South and the cotton fields, and made plans soon after his daughter was born. Mamie Till Mobley weeps at her son’s funeral on Sept. 6, 1955, in Chicago.