Civil Rights Figure, Author, Educator. She was the divorced mother of 14-year-old Emmitt Till. Courageously, she wanted the world to know the circumstances and the trial results of her son's racially-motivated 1955 murder by two white men in Mississippi. At first, she was denied the right to visually identify her son's body by a mortician, who was under orders by law enforcement officials not open his casket. However, she insisted and was allowed to open the casket. His body proved that he had a gun shot wound to the head, one eye removed and his skull fractured into several pieces. In her grief, she transported her son's body back home to Chicago, where she insisted that his body be made available for public viewing; over 50,000 people viewed the young man's remains. Emmitt Till's murderers, Roy Bryant and his half brother J. W. Milam, were acquitted by an all white jury who spent one hour of "deliberation" joking and drinking cold pops before returning their verdict. After the trial, Bryant and Milam sold their story to "LOOK" Magazine, which contained their confession of the murder and disposing of the body in a river. Their reasoning for the murder was, "He was inappropriate to a white woman." The two were protected by double jeopardy law, hence they could not be tried for the same crime after being found not guilty. Her pleas to President Eisenhower for a Federal investigation were ignored. She was a 1956 cum laude graduate of Chicago Teachers College and in 1975 received a Master's Degree in Administration and Supervision from Loyola University in Chicago. She taught special education in Chicago elementary schools. She did remarry for a second and third time while continuing to fight for Civil Rights for her race. She wrote a book about this heart-breaking incident, "Death of Innocence-The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America."