News of Emmett Till’s murder was widely circulated throughout the Black community in the months after his death. Tens of thousands of Black Americans attended his open-casket funeral in September 1955, and images of his mutilated body were printed in Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender, both influential Black-centric publications. These images came to symbolize widespread state-sponsored anti-Black violence at the hands of white people. Till’s murder became a rallying point for the civil rights movement that followed. Learn more.
