CHICAGO (WLS) — Thursday marked 70 years since the murder of Emmett Till.

ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch

John William “J.W.” Milam, alongside Roy Bryant, abducted 14-year-old Till from his great-uncle’s home on Aug. 28, 1955. The white men tortured and killed Till after the teenager was accused of whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a rural Mississippi grocery store.

Till’s body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Bryant and Milam were charged with Till’s murder, but they were acquitted by an all-white-male jury during the Jim Crow era.

Till had been shot. His body was dumped in the river, weighed down by a cotton gin fan tied around his neck.

Mamie Till-Mobley, Till’s mother, insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago, forcing America to confront the realities of racial violence.

Till’s murder was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Thousands came to his funeral, and saw the gruesome state of Till’s body.

“My mother had just received her copy of Jet magazine, and she brought us all together. And on the cocktail table in the front room, opened it up. And there was a picture of Emmett Till. And she said ‘Naw, I want you to see this. I want you to know that this is why I brought my boys, you my boys, from the South for this very reason,” Rep. Bobby Rush said. “And that stuck with me. That penetrated my spirit, penetrated my consciousness. What kind of human being, what kind of monster, could do something like this to a child? I still don’t have an answer, except one: total hatred.”

“This was a lynching,” said Christoper Benson, co-author of “Death of Innocence.” “The Emmett Till story is about more than Emmett Till. The Emmett Till story is about more than racism. It’s about more than racial violence. The Emmett Till story is about power.”

Till-Mobley co-authored “Death of Innocence,” as well.

Benson said he spent the last six months of her life with her.

“What was happening in 1955 was a reaction to what had just happened: Brown versus Board of Education. And clearly there were people who were up in arms about this changed legal relationship of two different identities, white and Black, and so they were pushing back in the most violent ways,” Benson said.

Till-Mobley told him Till wasn’t even supposed to go down South that summer because he wasn’t familiar with the racism that ran rampant in Mississippi. Benson says Till was a middle-class kid, who kept a pocket full of money.

“Mamie Till made several important decisions in moving the story forward,” Benson said. “What we see we murder trial 1955 is a miscarriage of justice. There’s no question about it.”

After that the Civil Rights Movement grew, bringing about massive change, from the end of segregation to voting rights for Black people.

And three years ago, Rush was able to pass a bill making lynching a federal crime.

“I named it the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act because of the fact that, what Emmett Till meant to me, what he meant to my constituents, what he meant to Chicago, wat he meant to my generation,” Rush said.

Reverend honors cousin of Emmett Till

The Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., Till’s cousin, is the last living witness to the deadly kidnapping.

“It was one of those nights in the South, when the moon didn’t shine,” Parker said.

Parker says he doesn’t remember much about that night, but he vividly remembers the feeling.

“It was pure Hell over there in that room,” Parker said. “I felt death very strong and fear, helpless.”

Back in 1955, they traveled from Chicago to Mississippi together.

He’s remembering his cousin, as he takes the same route they took seven decades ago.

“You didn’t die in vain, and you still speak from the grave. And we are going to carry on your legacy,” Parker said before boarding a train. “It shouldn’t be a story. It shouldn’t happened. In 2025 we still telling it because it’s some people that don’t believe it.”

READ ALSO | US releases Emmett Till investigation records ahead of 70th anniversary of Chicago teen’s killing

Aug. 28 was proclaimed “Mamie and Emmett Till Day” in Chicago.

Family describe the Chicago-born boy as a fun, loving kid, with a deep stutter and fondness for pranks.

“She said she gave him a crash course. But, you can’t give nobody a crash course on Mississippi,” Parker said. “My thing is, less we forget, we need to it, cause we can soon forget, cause some people are trying to wash it away now.”

Gravesite ceremony in Alsip

The community held a wreath-laying ceremony at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip at the gravesites of Till and his mother.

“If people had never seen Emmett Till, that face on Jet Magazine, that face throughout this country, the media on TV and newspapers, we would not be here today,” Minister Cheryl Gathings said.

Many remain concerned that there is still so much more that needs to be done.

Family says Till’s remains will eventually be moved to a family crypt he’ll share with his mother and his stepfather.

Organizations like the Till Institute are working to preserve Emmett and Mamie Till-Mobley’s story and legacy through educational programs and storytelling.

AP News contributed to this report.