Senate passes bill to honor Emmett Till and his mother

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has passed a bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager murdered by white supremacists in the 1950s, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. She insisted on an open casket funeral to demonstrate the brutality of his killing. Till was abducted, tortured and killed after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman in Mississippi. The killing galvanized the civil rights movement. Sens. Cory Booker, a Democrat, and Richard Burr, a Republican, introduced the bill. They describe it as a long overdue recognition of what the Till family endured and what they accomplished in their fight against injustice.