I am pleased that I am able to stand here today and say with a pure heart and meaningful heart that I am against the death penalty. There is no purpose that it serves except to further the damage that death has already done.

Have you ever sent a loved son on vacation, and had him returned to you in a pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you this sickening sight is your son, lynched?

I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till.

Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, `That's their business, not mine.' Now I know how wrong. I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.

When people saw what had happened to my son, men stood up who had never stood up before.