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BOONEVILLE, Miss. (AP) — Emmett Till's cousin says people should learn about the black teenager's brutal death that energized the civil rights movement. But the Rev. Wheeler Parker also says: "Hate is a luxury I can't afford."
The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports Parker spoke Tuesday at Northeast Mississippi Community College.
Parker and Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi in 1955. Parker says he heard Till whistle at a white woman working at a Mississippi grocery store and later saw kidnappers take Till from a family home at night.
Till was beaten and shot, and his body was found weighted down with a cotton gin fan in the Tallahatchie River. His mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago so people could see the corpse.
An all-white jury in Mississippi acquitted two white men in the killing.
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Information from: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, http://djournal.com
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