The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 is seen as one of the catalysts for the Civil Rights Movement (Picture: Getty)

Sixty-seven years ago, the horrific murder of Emmett Till sent shockwaves across America.

Emmett, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was abducted, tortured and shot in the head on August 28, 1955, after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, claimed he whistled at her in a Mississippi store.

The two killers were Roy, Carolyn’s husband, and Roy’s half brother J.W. Milam.

Emmett was accused of breaking the unwritten code of behaviour for a black male interacting with a white woman in the Jim Crow-era south.

His body was found three days after he disappeared – mutilated and bloated in the Tallahatchie River.

The brutality of his murder and choice to have an open coffin at his funeral made Emmett a posthumous flashpoint for the Civil Rights Movement.

His killers were acquitted and never faced justice under the legal system in America, while Carolyn lived a free life in North Carolina.

However, the discovery of an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for Carolyn in a basement in Greenwood, Mississippi, has led Emmett’s family to call for her arrest all these years later.