Chicago Tribune

Mary Schmich: The painful and necessary growth Emmett Till gave us

A few days from now, on July 25, Emmett Till might have celebrated his 77th birthday.

Imagine him. Mr. Till.

Not the 14-year-old boy in the open casket, with his mutilated face and his mother weeping by his side, but the man that boy never got to be.

By now, Mr. Till might be a retired teacher or postal carrier or lawyer. Maybe he'd still be living in his childhood home, a red-brick

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