The murder of Emmett Till shed light on the horrors of segregation and racism in the United States. Emmett Till, a young teenager from Chicago, was visiting family in Mississippi during August 1955, but he was entering a state much more different from his hometown. Dominated by segregation, Mississippi placed a tight leash on its African-American population. After apparently flirting with a white woman, which was deeply frowned upon at this time in history, young Till was brutally murdered. The murder of Emmett Till became an icon for the civil rights movement and helped initiate calls for equal rights for all nationalities and races in the United States. In the summer of 1955, Mamie Till, Emmett Till's mother, kissed her only son goodbye. he boarded a train to Mississippi and left to visit his family. He constantly reminded young people of the inevitable racism in the state and the vast differences between Chicago and Mississippi. Mamie Till feared for her son's safety as she was unaware of how to behave towards the unforgiving white population, and if a black person went against a white person's orders, this could lead to beatings or, in some cases, even to death. , of the black man. In the South, authorities often turned their heads when an African American was beaten or killed. (Contemporary Black Biography) Shortly after arriving in Mississippi, the young man was put to work picking cotton with the rest of his cousins. On one particularly hot day, after picking cotton, Emmett and some other black boys went to a local store in Money, Mississippi. The store, which was owned and operated by a young white couple named Carolyn and Roy Bryant, catered primarily to black field workers in the small and... middle of the paper......le Biography In Context. Network. January 30, 2014.Spencer, Robyn. "Emmett Till." Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History. Gale, 2006. Gale biography in context. Network. January 30, 2014. "The Emmit Till Affair, 1955." Discovering the history of the United States. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Student Resources in Context. Network. January 30, 2014. "Emmett Till." American decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al. vol. 6: 1950-1959. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Gale biography in context. Network. February 23, 2014.Younge, Gary. "America Dreams: The horrors of segregation unite the American civil rights movement. Fifty years after Martin Luther King's great speech, inequality persists, but in more subtle ways." New Statesman [1996] 23 August 2013: 20+. Student resources in context. Network. January 28, 2014. "The Emmit Till Affair, 1955." Discovering the history of the United States. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Student Resources in Context. Network. January 30. 2014.