Emmett Till was an African American teenager who originally was born in Chicago, but in 1955 he went to Mississippi to see some of his family. Remember that during this time, Southern states like Mississippi had enacted Jim Crow laws. These laws kept blacks and whites separate, as a lot of Southern whites were still very racist during this time. Since Emmett was from Chicago, he was not used to these Jim Crow laws and did not know how different he should act around white people.
While visiting his family in Mississippi, Emmett went to the store. This was when he came in contact with a white woman, who reported that he whistled at her and said inappropriate things. This white woman ended up telling her husband what happened, which she came out years later and said she lied about. This resulted in her husband and somebody else to kidnap, torture, and murder the young teenage boy.
During Emmett Till's funeral, his mother wanted his body to be an open casket. Keep in mind that his body was badly tortured and messed up because of what happened to him, but she still wanted to have his body be an open casket. She said, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby." She wanted to show the world the awful things that had happened to her son, just because of his skin color.
