On August 28, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured, and shot. Then, with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was thrown into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett's offense that provoked this abhorrent reaction from two adult white men? When he entered a store to buy gum, he allegedly whistled at a white saleswoman, who happened to be the wife of the store owner. This is the story of the end of Emmett Till's life. Lynchings, beatings, and crossfires had been occurring in the United States for years. But it wasn't until this young boy was the victim of a gruesome murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the horrors of ongoing racism in the South. This sparked the beginning of a flowering of national and international media coverage of civil rights violations in America. In the 2005 documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, Emmett's mother, Mamie, states that Charleston Sheriff Strider decided to collect her son's body. buried immediately there in Mississippi instead of sending it back to him in Chicago. It took the rallying of Ms. Till's officials in Chicago, where she lived, for her son's funeral to be halted just as his body was about to be buried. She spent a lot of money to have her son sent home to her. Upon receiving the box, she wanted to see her only child one last time and see what her murderers had done to her. Opening the box and seeing the corpse revealed the horrible truth of what had happened to her precious boy. In a surprising move, she decided to visit the open casket. When the funeral director asked her if she wanted him to try to clean up the middle of the paper......her story needed to be told to the world so her son wouldn't die in vain. In conclusion, Mamie Till eloquently summed up the significance of her son's historic moment by saying, “Emmett was the catalyst that launched the civil rights movement. Because when people saw what happened to this little 14-year-old boy, they understood that not only black men but also black children were in danger. And it took something to stir people up and let them know that we're either going to stand together or we're going to fall together. I know that without bloodshed there is no redemption” (The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till). The media gave unprecedented coverage to the murder, funeral and trial of Emmett Till. They reported it with passion. The media's willingness to share this story ultimately led to a permanent change in our country's attitude toward racism..