Emmett Till

Born

July 25, 1941

Died

August 28, 1955 (aged 14)

Known as

schoolchild

Emmett Louis Till was an African-American boy who, at 14 years old, was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.

Biography from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.