Although Till's murder and the subsequent acquittal of the two white men charged in connection with it were certainly not unique in the annals of American crimes, they attracted unprecedented national and international attention.
By the time the Chicago Defender began a series of articles on the case in early September, the acquittal had raised concerns—especially in the north and abroad—that blacks were not, in fact, receiving equal justice under law.
These concerns would be echoed just a year later in the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education prohibiting segregation in public schools, and shortly thereafter in the Montgomery bus boycott and sit-ins and Freedom Rides of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.
Till's murder—one of the most brutal and heinous crimes of its time—came to represent the brutality and oppression that black Americans routinely endured.
His murder thus was a galvanizing event in the early-1950s United States, leading to increased visibility of the civil rights movement and further galvanizing African-Americans to mobilize and stand up for their rights.