Sixty years ago today, a 14-year-old boy was thrust into American martyrdom.

His brutal death and his late mother’s determination to make his young life and early death not be in vain triggered a series of events that ultimately led to what we now know as the American Civil Rights Movement.

Emmett Till, a Chicago teen, was visiting family in the Mississippi Delta during the last hot days of summer in 1955.

Till, who, like many young teens, liked to play pranks, was dared by friends to ask a white woman working at a store for a date. The woman later said Till made lewd advances and whistled at her.

Days later, Till was snatched from his uncle’s house, beaten to a pulp, shot in the head and thrown into a river with a heavy fan tied to him with barbed wire.

He would have been just another statistic were it not for his courageous and grieving mother who insisted that his casket be opened so the world could see just how brutal racists could be.

The images of his mangled body were published around the world. The images, as horrible and grotesque as they were, needed to be seen.

Images of his boy-like face, swollen and disfigured were held up like a mirror to Southern society.

While parts of the South simply turned away and attempted to ignore the matter, enough Americans stood up and said, “Enough!”

America has changed tremendously since 1955, and we owe much of that to Till and his mother’s desire to make her son’s life make a difference in an unfair world.