In "To Kill a Mockingbird," a mockingbird symbolizes an innocent person who is unjustly persecuted. Based on this definition, one of the clearest examples of a real-life mockingbird in history is Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy brutally murdered in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman. Emmett exemplifies an unjustly persecuted innocent person in that key facts and circumstances were ignored, he was horrifically killed for his "crime", and in that the reaction and behavior of the juries-supposedly representing truth and fairness-ignored facts, logic, and justice. .
Till arrived in Money, Mississippi on August 21, 1955. Three days later, he and his cousin Curtis Jones joined some local boys and went to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, to buy candy. Emmett was from the North, and visiting his family for a few weeks. The market was owned by a white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant, and mostly catered to the low-income, sharecropping population. Alone in the store, Carolyn checked out Till while Jones and the other boys played checkers across the street. According to Jones, the other boys reported that Till had a photograph of an integrated class at the school he attended in Chicago, and Till bragged to the boys that the white children in the picture were his friends(Douglas), and that one white girl was his girlfriend (Metress 6). Subsequently, one or more of the boys dared Till to speak to 21-year-old Carolyn. What happened inside the store is still disputed, but Emmett may have wolf-whistled at Bryant, although a newspaper account and his mother stated that he stuttered and sometimes had unclear speech, so he whistled to overcome speech problems prior to asking for the bubble gum (Whitaker 189-224). .
Other accounts say that Emmett grabbed Carolyn's hand while she was checking him out, and possible asked her for a date. Till's cousin Simeon Wright wrote that Till was inside with Bryant for "less than a minute", and he saw no inappropriate behavior and heard "no lecherous conversation.
