Fifty years after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi while visiting family his family is finally receiving an apology for the events from community leaders in the county.Till's mother and his killers, who were acquitted by an all-white jury, has since died.
The events surrounding the Till case "defined to the world who we are in Tallahatchie County," said local bank president O.T. Sherman.
Till was kidnapped from a family members home in Money, Miss., in Aug. 1955. He was snatched from his bed, beaten, tortured and killed, allegedly for having whistled at the white shopkeeper's wife in a local grocery store a few days earlier. Federal officials declined his family's pleas to get involved.
After they were acquitted for the murder, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, both white, confessed to the killing in an article published in a national magazine. They have long since died — as free men.
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