On August 28, 1955, exactly 65 years ago, two white men grabbed Emmett Till from the house where he was sleeping and brutally lynched him. The white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, who falsely accused Till of grabbing her waist and uttering obsenities at her, is still alive today.

Emmett Till was only 14-years-old and his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, held an open casket funeral so that the whole world could see the violence and savagery of racism in America. The image was so heartbreaking that it inspired Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat on the bus.

Years after Emmett Till’s brutally lynched body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River at Graball Landing, white supremacists in Mississippi have shot at and vandalized Till’s historical memorial marker so many times it had to be made bulletproof with half inch AR500 steel.