Summarize the central idea of the article. Use evidence from the text to support your response (I will have to make another one of these because the whole story can't fit here). The murder of Emmett Till is a crime that continues to resonate1 with people around the world because of its brutality, and the fact that no one has ever been brought to justice for his killing. There have been varied accounts of what provoked his killers to act but, ultimately, the fact remains that the young boy was kidnapped, tortured and murdered for no other reason than the color of his skin. Emmett Till grew up in a middle-class, predominantly black neighborhood in Chicago, raised by his mother, Mamie Till. His great uncle Mose Wright traveled up from Mississippi to Chicago, in the summer of 1955, to visit Emmett and his mother. When Wright returned to the south, Emmett begged his mother to let him tag along, to visit the rest of the family. She relented,2 but sent him with a warning: Mississippi is very different from Chicago – make sure to behave yourself around the white people down there. Emmett agreed he would. He was 14 years old.

FLIRTING WITH DANGER
He arrived in his uncle’s hometown, Money, Mississippi, in late August. On the evening of August 24th, Emmett and several cousins stopped into a local store to buy candy, where they encountered a young white woman named Carolyn Bryant. She and her husband, Roy Bryant, owned the store. Earlier in the week, Emmett had bragged to his cousins about the white girls he’d dated at school in Chicago, so they dared him to say something to Carolyn as she sat behind the counter.

Emmett entered the store alone. Accounts have varied as to what Emmett did or said to her. For a long time, it was believed that he may have wolf-whistled, touched her hand, or asked her on a date. However, in an interview from 2007, Carolyn Bryant said “nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” and she confessed that she made up her claims that he had made a physical advance on her.3 Carolyn said that she did not remember what else happened that night, but it is known that she responded to Emmett Till by running outside to retrieve a pistol from her car. When the boys saw the gun, they ran away from the store to avoid more trouble.

THE MURDER
[5]Roy Bryant heard about the incident a few days later and began questioning black men around town to find out who had done it. He eventually traced it back to Emmett. Bryant and a friend, J. W. Milam, broke into Mose Wright’s house in the early morning hours of August 28, 1955, and demanded to know who had “harassed” his wife. They threatened to shoot Emmett, told him to get dressed, and led him outside to their pickup truck.

Bryant, Milam and several other men — both black and white — drove out of town, stopping twice to beat Emmett severely. Later that morning, Emmett’s Uncle Mose called the authorities and reported Bryant and Milam for kidnapping. They were arrested shortly thereafter, and Emmett was presumed4 still missing.

Three days after the abduction,5 a fisherman discovered Emmett’s body in the water of the Tallahatchie River. The corpse was so disfigured from the beatings and from being in the water so long that the only way it could be identified was by a ring on Emmett’s finger, bearing his initials.

THE FUNERAL
When Mamie Till found out about the murder, she insisted that the body be sent back to Chicago immediately, whatever the cost. When she saw Emmett’s mutilated6 face and body, she also insisted they hold an open-casket funeral, so everyone could see the worst effects of racism in the U. S.

Tens of thousands of people came to see Emmett and show their support for his mother. Newspapers across the country carried the story.

THE TRIAL
[10]Bryant and Milam stood trial for Emmett’s murder in late September, 1955. Lawyers for the defense argued that the body was too disfigured to be properly identified, and they claimed Emmett was probably still alive and simply had not turned up yet. Mose Wright testified against his nephew’s murderers, the first black man to testify against white men in the state of Mississippi.

The jury was made up of entirely white men. After listening to the facts of the case for five days, they deliberated7 for just 67 minutes before concluding that Bryant and Milam were not guilty. One juror said in an interview, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop,8 it wouldn’t have taken that long.”