Emmett Till, an African American teen from Chicago, is visiting relatives in Mississippi when he makes a fatal mistake - he whistles at a white woman, breaking the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South. Three days later, two white men drag him from bed and brutally murder him. After Emmett Till's murder, civil rights activist Rosa Parks is arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest inspires black leaders to mount a one-day bus boycott with 40,000 people. The success of the event leads to a year-long boycott led by 26-year-old Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.