Emmett Till was only fourteen years old in the 1950s when he was brutally murdered in a Mississippi town. Two men were charged with the murder. Many of the racial issues that occurred in the Till murder and court case were also depicted in Toni Morrison's novel, Song of Solomon. Emmett Till's life was somewhat the same as that of a typical African American, with all the prejudices he faced. Newspapers at the time, both white and black, had different ways of looking at the murder, and such differences of opinion form a framework for Morrison to use Till's life to portray the life of the Macon Dead in a racist society. Emmett Till was a young boy living in Chicago and was unaccustomed to all the racial issues of the South because he didn't have to deal with them until he went to a small town in Mississippi to visit his uncle. He soon realized how diverse the South really was. Emmett and some friends went to a white-owned store, and on his way out he was challenged by his friends to whistle at the white lady who ran the store. Later that day, Sunday, August 28, 1955, he was taken from his uncle's house by the lady's husband and was shot, beaten and, with a 270-pound weight tied around his neck, thrown into the Tallahatchie River. A few days later Till was found in the river by a boy fishing from the bank. The woman's husband, JW Bryant, and her brother-in-law Roy Milam were charged with kidnapping and murder. The trial was held in a segregated court on September 23, 1955. The all-white jury found Bryant and Milam not guilty. Emmett Till lost his life for something he didn't think was wrong; he was a good... mediocre friend... an old friend, a sad reminder of how white people killing black people have evolved into black people killing black people today. Emmett Till was a young boy who was murdered for whistling at a white woman. The black newspapers had his story all over the front pages, and it was very important to them, while the white newspapers only had a little column on the back pages, like it was no big deal. The repercussions of the racial issues of Emmett Till's story can also be read in the Song of Songs nearly fifty years later and on the front pages of today's newspapers. Works Cited Wexler, Sanford. The Civil Rights Movement: An Eyewitness Story. NY: Facts on file, 1993.