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 atrocious reaction from two adult white men? When he went into a store to buy chewing gum, he allegedly whistled at a white clerk, who was the wife of the store owner. This is the story of the end of Emmett Till's life. For years, lynchings, beatings and cross burnings had occurred in the United States. But it was only when this little boy suffered a horrific murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the horrors of racism in the South. It triggered the beginning of a blossoming of both 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 Sheriff Strider of Charleston decided to have her son's body buried immediately there in Mississippi instead of shipping it back to her in Chicago. It took Mrs. Till's mobilization of authorities in Chicago, where she lived, to stop her son's burial at the moment his body was about to be buried in the ground. She incurred great personal expense to have her son sent home to her. After receiving the box, he wanted to see his only son one last time and see what his killers had done to him. Opening the box and seeing the corpse revealed the horrible truth of what had happened to her precious boy. In a surprising move, he decided to see the open coffin. When the undertaker asked her if she wanted him to try to clean up that b...... middle of paper ...... her story needed to be told to the world so that her son would not die in vain. In conclusion, Mamie Till eloquently summed up the importance of her son's historic moment by saying, “Emmett was the catalyst that started the civil rights movement. Because when people saw what had happened to this 14-year-old boy, they knew that not only black men were in danger, but black children as well. And it took something to move people and let them know that we will either stand together or we will fall together. I know that without bloodshed there is no redemption” (The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till). The media gave unprecedented coverage to Emmett Till's murder, funeral, and trial. They reported it with passion. The media's push to share this story ultimately produced a permanent change in our country's attitude toward racism.