Willie Louis, previously Willie Reed, was a witness to the murder of which 14-year-old African-American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after a white woman said she was offended by him in her family's grocery store?
Willie Louis Willie Louis, previously Willie Reed (June 14, 1937 – July 18, 2013) was a witness to the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Till was an African-American child from Chicago who was murdered in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman in a Money, Mississippi grocery store. Till's murder was a watershed moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Louis testified in court about what he had seen, but an all-white jury found the men not guilty. Fearing for his life, Louis moved to Chicago after the trial and changed his name from Willie Reed to Willie Louis. He was interviewed in 2003 for the PBS documentary "The Murder of Emmett Till" and was interviewed the next year on the CBS News television program "60 Minutes".
Lynching of Austin Callaway Austin Callaway, also known as Austin Brown (d. 9 September 1940), was a young African-American man who was taken from jail by a group of six white men and lynched on September 8, 1940, in LaGrange, Georgia. The day before, Callaway had been arrested as a suspect in an assault of a white woman. The gang carried out extrajudicial punishment and prevented the youth from ever receiving a trial. They shot him numerous times, fatally wounding him and leaving him for dead. Found by a motorist, Callaway was taken to a hospital, where he died of his wounds.