Webb, Mississippi (November 23, 1921 -January 6, 2003) 82 yrs

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, educator, civil rights activist, and Mother of 14-year-old Emmit Till. August 28th, 1955, TIll-Mobley heard the devastating news. Her only child had been kidnapped in Money, Mississippi. He was tortured and shot. His body was wrapped in barbed wire attached to a 7-pound fan and then thrown in the Tallahatchie River. She insisted that authorities send his body home to Chicago. When she went to the train station to see the body of her son she collapsed. In her grief and outrage, she called the Chicago Defender. It was one of the country’s leading Black newspapers. She also reached out to Ebony and Jet magazines. She told reporters she wanted the world to see. She wanted to expose the barbaric act committed against her son by white men in Mississippi. Then the mother did something that would change history. She asked for an open casket at his funeral. Till-Mobley coauthored her memoir with Christopher Benson. The memoir is titled Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America. It was published by Random House in 2003, almost 50 years after her son’s death.