Hours after Till’s body was discovered protruding from the Tallahatchie River, Mississippi authorities began to bury the body—and the story—in a rural cemetery at a rural church deep in the Mississippi Delta. Had Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley not…

When Emmett Till’s body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River on Wednesday morning, August 31, plans were hastily made to have him buried in the small cemetery at the East Money Church of God in Christ—a humble black church that Moses Wright once…