The Chicago City Council has designated as a landmark the home of Emmett Till, a Black 14-year-old boy who was disfigured and lynched by racists in Mississippi in a 1955 lynching, the Associated Press reports.

Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when a group of white men burst into his uncle’s house and accused the boy of whistling at a white woman at a grocery store.  They kidnapped the boy; his disfigured body was found three days later with rope marks around his neck.  His face was mutilated due to the beaten he had received.

Till’s body was returned to his mother in Chicago, who insisted that there be an open casket for his funeral.  She invited press photographers to take pictures of his disfigured face, and those photographs appeared in newspapers around the country, galvanizing the nation against slavery.

Two white men were charged with Till’s murder, but they were acquitted by an all-white jury in a trial.  In an interview with a news magazine a year later, they both admitted to having killed Till, but could not be tried again due to double jeopardy provisions.

Till’s murder and the subsequent acquittal of his killers is seen as a turning point in the Civil Rights fight of the 1950s and ’60s, with millions of people taking up the fight for racial justice and equality under the law.

[Editor’s Note:  If you are curious about the degree to which this boy was beaten and google his image, be advised that the photos are disturbing.]