On August 24, 1955, Emmett Till and a few of his friends stopped at the local Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market. Emmett, only fourteen years old, stood outside Bryant's, displaying a photo of a young Caucasian girl from Chicago who he claimed was his girlfriend. The boys dare each other to come in and ask Carolyn Bryant out on a date. Without considering the repercussions, Till entered the store, bought his two cents worth of bubble gum and whispered "bye, baby" to Bryant and followed with a whistle. A decision that cost him his life indefinitely. On August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law stopped by Mose Wright's cabin looking for "the boy who talked." Despite Mr. Wright's pleas, Bryant dragged Till with him, threatening Mr. Wright's life as he left. A decomposing body was found in the Tallahatchie River by a white boy who was fishing. All he could recognize was a decomposing body with a 100-pound fan tied to his neck with barbed wire. The body had been badly mutilated and beaten; The boy was only able to identify half of the body's mutilated face, with only the right side still intact. After being identified and assessed, the only way to recognize the body was to wear the ring inscribed “LT May 25, 1943” on your finger. Emmett Till had been tortured, shot and thrown into a river to decompose. His mother, Mamie Till, finally received her son's corpse and was absolutely distraught. She opened her son's coffin so that "the whole world could see what they did to my boy." Thousands of people lined the streets to mourn the loss of young, mutilated Emmett. The sight of her son's mutilated body shook all of Mississippi. Meanwhile, about two weeks after the paper appeared in the city, Jo Ann Robinson was planning a bus boycott in support of Rosa's actions. Jo Ann Robinson taught English at an all-black college in Alabama. With the support of Nixon and cabinet ministers, the anticipated boycott spread throughout the black community. Just four days after Rosa's arrest, the boycott began. More than ninety percent of blacks who usually rode city buses joined the boycott. This legendary boycott lasted 381 days and paved the way for a new way to defeat Jim Crow laws and demand change, without resorting to violence. Works Cited Lowery, Charles and John Marszalek. Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights | from Emancipation to the present day. Westport: Greenwood Publishing, Inc., 1992. Wexler, Sanford. The Civil Rights Movement: An Eyewitness Story. New York: Library of Congress, 1993.