When I was in elementary school-- I forgot which grade-- I remember a video history lesson about racism and one of the stories that my teacher told me about a young boy named Emmett Till. He was a young black teenager living in the 1950s who was visiting relatives in Mississippi. Story goes that he whistled at a white woman and for that, he was abducted, tortured, killed, and his body thrown in the river. His killers were acquitted, mostly because of a biased white jury.
The one thing I remember particularly about this story was of Emmett Till's funeral. His body was so badly beaten that etiquette would have called for his coffin to be closed during the ceremony. But his mother, wanting to show the atrocity of his torture and death, requested that the coffin should be open. People fainted at his funeral, and upon seeing a photo of the deceased, I don't think I will ever forget it either.
He was only fourteen years old. He never got any real justice. His two killers were acquitted and are now dead, but there is new evidence coming to surface that there are more people involved in his slaying that investigators are going to re-open the case.
I hope Emmett Till will finally get some justice and peace this time around.