September 6 Illinois History Minute

It’s September 6th, the day in 1955 when a funeral for 14-year-old lynching victim Emmett Till was held at the Roberts Temple, Church of God in Christ, on Chicago’s south side. Tens of thousands of people attended the funeral, where Mamie Till-Mobley insisted that the casket be opened to display her son’s mutilated body. Days earlier in Mississippi, Till had been abducted, tortured and murdered by the husband and brother-in-law of a young white woman that the teenager had supposedly offended.

Jane Addams was born in Cedarville on this day in 1860. She co-founded Chicago’s Hull House settlement house.

And Justina Machado, the star of TV shows like One Day at a Time and Six Feet Under, was born in Chicago on this day in 1972.