At critical moments in human history, events can occur that cause certain people to transcend their own existence to become symbols for something larger than themselves. BB King was just a young boy who wanted to play the guitar. William Faulkner had a gift for writing, and Jim Henson's imagination led him down a ditch bank one day to find a frog he named Kermit. These ordinary names became symbols of our national identity, defining a change in the future of our history. For Mississippi, we lean on names like King, Faulkner, and Henson to relate our history of rich musical, literary, and film history. These iconic personalities help define Mississippi to the world and in turn allow Mississippi to define its place in America's history. At times in our past, men and women have shaped our future by their actions, inventions, or capabilities. For the civil rights movement in America, one such figure was Emmett Till. The small town of Sumner, Mississippi never expected to be the center of national and international attention, and yet it would take a little more than a month for the world to come and know the small Delta Town and a boy named Emmett. Emmett The Boy Emmett Lewis Till was born July 25, 1941 to Mamie Till and Lewis Till. Emmett lived the majority of his short life in or around Chicago, Illinois. While he never knew his father, Emmett's mother, Mamie, was a strong influence in his life. Define the social constraints and discrimination she faced as an African-American woman growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, Mamie Till excelled both academically and professionally. She was only the fourth black student to graduate from suburban Chicago's predominantly white, cargo community high school, and the first black student to make the school's A honor role. While raising Emmett Till as a single mother, she worked long hours for the Air Force as a clerk in charge of secret and confidential files. Enticed by the idea of spending time with cousins around his own age in a land unknown to him, Emmett begged to take the long train ride down to Mississippi to spend a vacation with his great uncle, Moe's right, and his cousins. Mamie allowed him to go, but it was against her better judgment, for as she packed his case with a trip, she warned him to be respectful of all white men and women. She even warned, if you have to get on your knees and bow when a white person goes past, she told him, do it willingly. How it starts. From a world where he was surrounded by businesses run by African Americans and a neighborhood bursting with culture and vibrancy, Emmett found himself deposited in the human stagnant agrarian landscape of the Mississippi Delta on the 20th of August 1955. It was this brief and tragic trip that will forever tie the young Emmett Till to Mississippi's turbulent past. While the story will never be completely clear, what is known is that on the 24th of August, Emmett and his cousins entered Bryant's grocery store and meat market in money Mississippi. While inside, Emmett either whistled or gestured to Carolyn Bryant. Whatever his action was, a fire was ignited that would only rage on through the next few days and over the course of a few weeks of the murder trial and give energy to the burgeoning civil rights movement. The fears of others. From his 1956 essay on fear, William Faulkner writes, if the facts as stated in the look magazine account of the Till affair are correct, this remains. Two adults armed in the dark, kidnapped a 14-year-old boy and taken him away to frighten him. Instead of which, the 14-year-old boy not only refuses to be frightened, but unarmed, alone, in the dark, so frightens the two armed adults that they must destroy him. What are we misscipients afraid of? On the night of August 28, 1955, he was kidnapped and brutally murdered at the hands of Roy Bryant and J. W. Mylon. Emmett's body was soon discovered in the Tallahacci River, almost unidentifiable except for his late father's ring on his finger. Initially, misscipients both white and black condemned Bryant and Mylon, but his word of the murder spread throughout the nation attitudes began to change. Mississippians felt that the entire state had been condemned for the actions of two of its residents. Furthermore, a story describing the murderer's motivations began to spread and to define the case to many. Carolyn Bryant, wife of Roy Bryant, told of inappropriate behavior from Emmett toward her and of a whistle at her. In the segregated south, such interaction between a black male and a white female was taboo. The fact that most referred to the case as the wolf whistle murder illustrates its importance in the minds of many. The outcome of the murderous trial had been preordained as it became a fight between northern agitators and the right to the southern way of life. Despite value and efforts by the prosecution, Mylon and Bryant were acquitted of any crime and released. The outrage from around the country was instantaneous. Emmett Till had become a symbol for a fledgling civil rights movement. A mother and her boy, because there had been other incidents of lynchings over the years, the question could be asked, why Emmett Till? Despite his young age and the brutality of his murder, his case could have easily faded into obscurity. Perhaps the key factor in elevating the Till murder in the public eye above other lynching cases was Emmett's mother, Mamie Till Bradley. Upon the discovery and identification of the body, Mamie embarked on a crusade to inform the world about what had happened to her child. She even made the dangerous trip to Mississippi for the trial and was in the courtroom every day while there. The culmination of her efforts came with the public display of Emmett's mutilated and bloated body in Chicago. As Mamie Till Bradley described, I couldn't bear the thought of people being horrified by the sight of my son, but on the other hand, I felt the alternative was even worse. After all, we had averted our eyes for far too long, turning away from the ugly reality facing us as a nation. Let the world see what I've seen. What we leave behind us when we go. The outrage that grew from that effort changed the Emmett Till case from murder into an emotional flashpoint for the civil rights movement. One hundred days after the Till murder, Rosa Parks teamed with a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. to protest the segregation of public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks reflected on why she did not take a seat at the back of the bus that day. I thought about Emmett and I could not go back. These events propelled the issue of civil rights into the public conscience and sent out a clarion call for social change in America. Historian Robin Kelly declared, we are not going to die like this. Instead, we're going to live and transform the South so people won't have to die like this.