By Phil Rosenthal
Television Critic
Chicago Sun-Times
The murder of Emmett Till, a story by now as familiar as it is sad, is one of those episodes in history that needs to be revisited time and again so that the evil mankind can do is never forgotten.
It's the story of a 14-year-old African- American boy from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed because he whistled at a white woman in 1955 Mississippi. His two accused murderers were acquitted in short order by an all-white jury, which apparently bought the defense contention that convictions would upend Southern life as they knew it.
No longer at risk of jail time, the two men later confessed to the crime without an iota of shame, only compounding the outrage and injustice.
CBS' "60 Minutes" this Sunday is the latest to review the incident, which, as correspondent Ed Bradley notes, helped ignite this nation's civil rights movement.
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