On this day in 1955 fourteen year old Emmett Till, while visiting relatives in Mississippi from his home in Chicago was abducted and then brutally murdered. His offense had been talking to a young white woman.
The nation recoiled in horror.
For many this marks the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.
Ironically on this same day two years later Senator Strom Thurmond began the longest filibuster conducted by a single senator in history, lasting twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes, in an attempt to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
He failed.
A new era had begun.
A bit late, but welcome…
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