Emmett Till
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Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
boy who was abducted, tortured, and
lynched Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
in
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
. Till was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. During summer vacation in August 1955, he was visiting relatives near
Money, Mississippi Money is an unincorporated community near Greenwood in Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, in the Mississippi Delta. It has fewer than 100 residents, down from 400 in the early 1950s when a cotton mill operated there. Money is located o ...
, in the
Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo ...
region. He spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the white, married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Although what happened at the store is a matter of dispute, Till was accused of flirting with, touching, or whistling at Bryant. Till's interaction with Bryant, perhaps unwittingly, violated the unwritten code of behavior for a black male interacting with a white female in the
Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
-era
South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
. Several nights after the incident in the store, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam, who were armed, went to Till's great-uncle's house and abducted Emmett. They took him away then beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the
Tallahatchie River The Tallahatchie River is a river in Mississippi which flows from Tippah County, through Tallahatchie County, to Leflore County, where it joins the Yalobusha River to form the Yazoo River. The river is navigable for about . At Money, Mississi ...
. Three days later, the boy’s mutilated and bloated body was discovered and retrieved from the river. Till's body was returned to Chicago, where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket, which was held at
Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ is a Christian house of worship located in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The church was the site of Emmett Till's open-casket funeral in 1955. The church was designated as a Chicago lan ...
. It was later said that "The open-coffin funeral held by
Mamie Till Bradley Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley (born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan; November 23, 1921 – January 6, 2003) was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, after accu ...
At the time of Emmett's murder in 1955, Emmett's mother was often referred to by using her second husband's name as, ''Mamie Till Bradley''. In 1957, she married Gene Mobley and then became known as ''Mamie Till Mobley''. exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention on not only U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy". Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his open casket, and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the U.S. critical of the state. Although local newspapers and law enforcement officials initially decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they responded to national criticism by defending Mississippians, temporarily giving support to the killers. In September 1955, an
all-white jury Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial ...
found Bryant and Milam not guilty of Till's murder. Protected against
double jeopardy In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence (primarily in common law jurisdictions) that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare case ...
, the two men publicly admitted in a 1956 interview with '' Look'' magazine that they had tortured and murdered the boy, selling the story of how they did it for $4,000. Till's murder was seen as a catalyst for the next phase of the civil rights movement. In December 1955, the
Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States ...
began in Alabama and lasted more than a year, resulting eventually in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional. According to historians, events surrounding Till's life and death continue to resonate. An Emmett Till Memorial Commission was established in the early 21st century. The Sumner County Courthouse was restored and includes the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. Fifty-one sites in the Mississippi Delta are memorialized as associated with Till. The
Emmett Till Antilynching Act The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a landmark United States federal law which makes lynching a federal hate crime. The act amends the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and prior hate crime laws to define lynching a ...
, an American law which makes lynching a federal
hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
, was signed into law on March 29, 2022 by President Joe Biden.


Early childhood

Emmett Till was born in 1941 in Chicago; he was the son of Mamie Carthan (1921–2003) and Louis Till (1922–1945). Emmett's mother Mamie was born in the small
Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta") * Delta Air Lines, US * Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 Delta may also ...
town of
Webb, Mississippi Webb is a town in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The population was 565 at the 2010 census. History Webb was founded circa 1880. The first post office was founded in 1880 and named Hood for one of the earlier settlers. In 1882, Judge James L. ...
. The Delta region encompasses the large, multi-county area of northwestern Mississippi in the watershed of the Yazoo and
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
rivers. When Carthan was two years old, her family moved to
Argo, Illinois Summit is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 11,161 at the 2020 census. The name Summit, in use since 1836, refers to the highest point on the Chicago Portage between the northeast-flowing Chicago River and the s ...
, near Chicago, as part of the Great Migration of rural black families out of the South to the North to escape violence, lack of opportunity and unequal treatment under the law. Argo received so many Southern migrants that it was named "Little Mississippi"; Carthan's mother's home was often used by other recent migrants as a
way station 250px, Layover for buses at LACMTA's Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles ">Los_Angeles.html" ;"title="Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles">Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles In scheduled transportation, a layover (also waypoint, way ...
while they were trying to find jobs and housing.Beito and Beito, p. 116. Mississippi was the poorest state in the U.S. in the 1950s, and the Delta counties were some of the poorest in Mississippi. Mamie Carthan was born in
Tallahatchie County Tallahatchie County is a county in the U.S. state of Mississippi. At the 2020 census, the population was 12,715. Its county seats are Charleston and Sumner. Tallahatchie County is located in the Mississippi Delta region, divided by the Tall ...
, where the average income per white household in 1949 was $690 (). For black families, the figure was $462 (). In the rural areas, economic opportunities for blacks were almost nonexistent. They were mostly
sharecropper Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...
s who lived on land owned by whites. Blacks had essentially been disenfranchised and excluded from voting and the political system since 1890 when the white-dominated legislature passed a new constitution that raised barriers to voter registration. Whites had also passed ordinances establishing racial segregation and
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
. Mamie largely raised Emmett with her mother; she and Louis Till separated in 1942 after she discovered that he had been unfaithful. Louis later abused her, choking her to unconsciousness, to which she responded by throwing scalding water at him. For violating court orders to stay away from Mamie, Louis Till was forced by a judge in 1943 to choose between jail or enlisting in the
U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
. In 1945, a few weeks before his son's fourth birthday, he was
court-martial A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...
ed and executed in Italy for the murder of an Italian woman and the rape of two others.Houck and Grindy, pp. 134–135. At the age of six, Emmett contracted
polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe s ...
, which left him with a persistent
stutter Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the ...
. Mamie and Emmett moved to Detroit, where she met and married "Pink" Bradley in 1951. Emmett preferred living in Chicago, so he returned there to live with his grandmother; his mother and stepfather rejoined him later that year. After the marriage dissolved in 1952, "Pink" Bradley returned alone to Detroit. Mamie Till Bradley and Emmett lived together in a busy neighborhood in
Chicago's South Side The South Side is an area of Chicago, Illinois, U.S. It lies south of the city's Loop area in the downtown. Geographically, it is the largest of the three sides of the city that radiate from downtown, with the other two being the north and we ...
near distant relatives. She began working as a civilian clerk for the
U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...
for a better salary. She recalled that Emmett was industrious enough to help with chores at home, although he sometimes got distracted. His mother remembered that he did not know his own limitations at times. Following the couple's separation, Bradley visited Mamie and began threatening her. At eleven years old, Emmett, with a butcher knife in hand, told Bradley he would kill him if the man did not leave. Usually, however, Emmett was happy. He and his cousins and friends pulled pranks on each other (Emmett once took advantage of an extended car ride when his friend fell asleep and placed the friend's underwear on his head), and they also spent their free time in pickup baseball games. He was a smart dresser, and was often the center of attention among his peers.


Plans to visit relatives in Mississippi

In 1955, Mamie Till Bradley's uncle, 64-year-old Mose Wright, visited her and Emmett in Chicago during the summer and told Emmett stories about living in the Mississippi Delta. Emmett wanted to see for himself. Wright planned to accompany Till with a cousin, Wheeler Parker; another cousin, Curtis Jones, would join them soon after. Wright was a sharecropper and part-time minister who was often called "Preacher". He lived in
Money, Mississippi Money is an unincorporated community near Greenwood in Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, in the Mississippi Delta. It has fewer than 100 residents, down from 400 in the early 1950s when a cotton mill operated there. Money is located o ...
, a small town in the Delta that consisted of three stores, a school, a post office, a
cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); a ...
, and a few hundred residents, north of Greenwood. Before Emmett departed for the Delta, his mother cautioned him that Chicago and Mississippi were two different worlds, and he should know how to behave in front of whites in the South.Hampton, p. 2. He assured her he understood. Statistics on lynchings began to be collected in 1882. Since that time, more than 500 African Americans have been killed by extrajudicial violence in Mississippi alone, and more than 3,000 across the South. Most of the incidents took place between 1876 and 1930; though far less common by the mid-1950s, these racially motivated murders still occurred. Throughout the South, interracial relationships were prohibited as a means to maintain
white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...
. Even the suggestion of sexual contact between black men and white women could carry severe penalties for black men. A resurgence of the enforcement of such Jim Crow laws was evident following
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, when African-American veterans started pressing for equal rights in the South. Racial tensions increased after the
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
's 1954 decision in ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' to end segregation in public education, which it ruled unconstitutional. Many segregationists believed the ruling would lead to interracial dating and marriage. Whites strongly resisted the court's ruling; one Virginia county closed all its public schools to prevent integration. Other jurisdictions simply ignored the ruling. In other ways, whites used stronger measures to keep blacks politically disenfranchised, which they had been since the turn of the century. Segregation in the South was used to constrain blacks forcefully from any semblance of social equality. A week before Till arrived in Mississippi, a black activist named
Lamar Smith Lamar Seeligson Smith (born November 19, 1947) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States House of Representatives for for 16 terms, a district including most of the wealthier sections of San Antonio and Austin, as ...
was shot and killed in front of the county courthouse in Brookhaven for political organizing. Three white suspects were arrested, but they were soon released.


Encounter between Till and Carolyn Bryant

Till arrived in Money, Mississippi, on August 21, 1955. On August 24, he and cousin Curtis Jones skipped church where his great-uncle Mose Wright was preaching and joined some local boys as they went to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market to buy candy. The teenagers were children of sharecroppers and had been picking cotton all day. The market mostly served the local sharecropper population and was owned by a white couple, 24-year-old Roy Bryant and his 21-year-old wife Carolyn. Carolyn was alone in the front of the store that day; her sister-in-law was in the rear of the store watching children. Jones left Till with the other boys while Jones played checkers across the street. The facts of what took place in the store are still disputed. According to what Jones said at the time, the other boys reported that Till had a photograph of an integrated class at the school he attended in Chicago,Accounts are unclear; Till had just completed the seventh grade at the all-black McCosh Elementary School in Chicago (Whitfield, p. 17). and Till bragged to the boys that the white children in the picture were his friends. He pointed to a white girl in the picture, or referred to a picture of a white girl that had come with his new wallet,FBI (2006), p. 44. and said she was his girlfriend. According to Jones' account, one or more of the local boys then dared Till to speak to Bryant.Hampton, p. 3. However, writing a personal account of the incident in a book released in 2009, Till's cousin Simeon Wright, who was also present, disputed Jones' version of what happened on that day. According to Wright, Till did not have a photo of a white girl in his wallet and no one dared him to flirt with Bryant. Speaking in 2015, Wright said: "We didn't dare him to go to the store—the white folk said that. They said that he had pictures of his white girlfriend. There were no pictures. They never talked to me. They never interviewed me." The FBI report completed in 2006 notes: " urtisJones recanted his 1955 statements prior to his death and apologized to Mamie Till-Mobley". According to some versions, including comments from some of the youngsters standing outside the store, Till may have wolf-whistled at Bryant. Till's cousin, Simeon Wright, who was with him at the store, stated that Till whistled at Bryant, saying, "I think mmettwanted to get a laugh out of us or something," adding, "He was always joking around, and it was hard to tell when he was serious." Wright stated that following the whistle he became immediately alarmed. "Well, it scared us half to death," Wright recalled. "You know, we were almost in shock. We couldn't get out of there fast enough, because we had never heard of anything like that before. A black boy whistling at a white woman? In Mississippi? No." Wright stated "The
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
and night riders were part of our daily lives". Following his disappearance, a newspaper account stated that Till sometimes whistled to alleviate his stuttering. His speech was sometimes unclear; his mother said he had particular difficulty with pronouncing "b" sounds, and he may have whistled to overcome problems asking for bubble gum. She said that, to help with his articulation, she taught Till how to whistle softly to himself before pronouncing his words. During the murder trial,During
trial In law, a trial is a coming together of Party (law), parties to a :wikt:dispute, dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence (law), evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate claims or d ...
, Carolyn Bryant's testimony was taken outside the presence of the jury and ruled inadmissible. ()
Bryant testified that Till grabbed her hand while she was stocking candy and said, "How about a date, baby?" She said that after she freed herself from his grasp, the young man followed her to the cash register, grabbed her waist and said, "What's the matter baby, can't you take it?"Notes later obtained from the defense give a different story, with Bryant earlier claiming she was "insulted" but not mentioning him touching her. () Bryant said she freed herself, and Till said, "You needn't be afraid of me, baby", used "one 'unprintable' word" and said "I've been with white women before."Federal Bureau of Investigation (2006), p. 40.Whitaker, Stephen (Summer 2005)
"A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Murder and Trial of Emmett Till"
(PDF) ''Rhetoric & Public Affairs'' 8 (2), pp. 189–224.
Bryant also alleged that one of Till's companions came into the store, grabbed him by the arm, and ordered him to leave. According to historian Timothy Tyson, Bryant admitted to him in a 2008 interview that her testimony during the trial that Till had made verbal and physical advances was false. Bryant had testified Till grabbed her waist and uttered obscenities but later told Tyson "that part's not true". As for the rest of what happened, the 72-year-old stated she could not remember. Bryant is quoted by Tyson as saying "Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him". However, the tape recordings that Tyson made of the interviews with Bryant do not contain Bryant saying those things. In addition, the woman with Bryant at the interviews, her daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, says that Bryant never told Tyson that. Decades later, Till's cousin Simeon Wright also challenged the account given by Carolyn Bryant at the trial. Wright claims he entered the store "less than a minute" after Till was left inside alone with Bryant, and he saw no inappropriate behavior and heard "no lecherous conversation". Wright said Till "paid for his items and we left the store together". In their 2006 investigation of the cold case, the FBI noted that a second anonymous source, who was confirmed to have been in the store at the same time as Till and his cousin, supported Wright's account. Author Devery Anderson writes that in an interview with the defense's attorneys, Bryant told a version of the initial encounter that included Till grabbing her hand and asking her for a date, but not Till approaching her and grabbing her waist, mentioning past relationships with white women, or having to be dragged unwillingly out of the store by another boy. Anderson further notes that many remarks prior to Till's kidnapping made by those involved indicate that it was his remarks to Bryant that angered his killers, rather than any alleged physical harassment. For instance, Mose Wright (a witness to the kidnapping) said that the kidnappers mentioned only "talk" at the store, and Sheriff George Smith only spoke of the arrested killers accusing Till of "ugly remarks". Anderson suggests that this evidence taken together implies that the more extreme details of Bryant's story were invented after the fact as part of the defense's legal strategy. In any event, after Wright and Till left the store, Bryant went outside to retrieve a pistol from underneath the seat of a car. The teenagers saw her do this and left immediately. It was acknowledged that Till whistled while Bryant was going to her car. However, it is disputed whether Till whistled toward Bryant or toward a checkers game that was occurring just across the street. One of the other boys ran across the street to tell Curtis Jones what happened in the store. When the older man with whom Jones was playing checkers heard the story, he urged the boys to leave quickly, fearing violence. Bryant told others of the events at the store, and the story spread quickly. Jones and Till declined to tell his great-uncle Mose Wright, fearing they would get in trouble. Till said he wanted to return home to Chicago. Carolyn's husband Roy Bryant was on an extended trip hauling shrimp to Texas and did not return home until August 27. Historian Timothy Tyson said an investigation by civil rights activists concluded Carolyn Bryant did not initially tell her husband Roy Bryant about the encounter with Till, and that Roy was told by a person who hung around down at their store. Roy was reportedly angry at his wife for not telling him. Carolyn Bryant told the FBI she didn't tell her husband because she feared he would beat Till up.


Lynching

When Roy Bryant was informed of what had happened, he aggressively questioned several young black men who entered the store. That evening, Bryant, with a black man named J. W. Washington, approached a black teenager walking along a road. Bryant ordered Washington to seize the boy, put him in the back of a pickup truck, and took him to be identified by a companion of Carolyn's who had witnessed the episode with Till. Friends or parents vouched for the boy in Bryant's store, and Carolyn's companion denied that the boy Bryant and Washington seized was the one who had accosted her. Somehow, Bryant learned that the boy in the incident was from Chicago and was staying with Mose Wright.Some recollections of this part of the story relate that news of the incident traveled in both black and white communities very quickly. Others say that Carolyn Bryant refused to tell her husband about it. Till's oldest cousin Maurice Wright, perhaps put off by Till's bragging and clothes told Roy Bryant at his store about Till's interaction with Bryant's wife. (Whitfield, p. 19.) Several witnesses overheard Bryant and his 36-year-old half-brother, John William "J. W." Milam, discussing taking Till from his house. In the early morning hours of August 28, 1955, sometime between 2 and 3:30a.m., Bryant and Milam drove to Mose Wright's house. Milam was armed with a pistol and a flashlight. He asked Wright if he had three boys in the house from Chicago. Till was sharing a bed with another cousin; there were eight people in the small two-bedroom cabin. Milam asked Wright to take them to "the nigger who did the talking". Till's great-aunt offered the men money, but Milam refused as he rushed Emmett to put on his clothes. Mose Wright informed the men that Till was from up north and didn't know any better. Milam reportedly then asked, "How old are you, preacher?" to which Wright responded "64". Milam threatened that if Wright told anybody he wouldn't live to see 65. The men marched Till out to the truck. Wright said he heard them ask someone in the car if this was the boy, and heard someone say "yes". When asked if the voice was that of a man or a woman Wright said "it seemed like it was a lighter voice than a man's". In a 1956 interview with '' Look'' magazine, in which they confessed to the killing, Bryant and Milam said they would have brought Till by the store in order to have Carolyn identify him, but stated they did not do so because they said Till admitted to being the one who had talked to her. They tied up Till in the back of a green pickup truck and drove toward Money, Mississippi. According to some witnesses, they took Till back to Bryant's Groceries and recruited two black men. The men then drove to a barn in
Drew Drew may refer to: __NOTOC__ Places ;In the United States * Drew, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Drew, Mississippi, a city * Drew, Missouri, an unincorporated community * Drew, Oregon, an unincorporated community * Drew County, Arkansas ...
. They pistol-whipped him on the way and reportedly knocked him unconscious.
Willie Reed Willie Reed Jr. (born May 16, 1990) is an American professional basketball player who last played for Budućnost of the Montenegrin Basketball League. He played college basketball for Saint Louis University. College career Reed spent two season ...
, who was 18 years old at the time, saw the truck passing by. Reed recalled seeing two white men in the front seat, and "two black males" in the back. Some have speculated that the two black men worked for Milam and were forced to help with the beating, although they later denied being present. Willie Reed said that while walking home, he heard the beating and crying from the barn. He told a neighbor and they both walked back up the road to a water well near the barn, where they were approached by Milam. Milam asked if they heard anything. Reed responded "No". Others passed by the shed and heard yelling. A local neighbor also spotted "Too Tight" (Leroy Collins) at the back of the barn washing blood off the truck and noticed Till's boot. Milam explained he had killed a deer and that the boot belonged to him. Some have claimed that Till was shot and tossed over the Black Bayou Bridge in
Glendora, Mississippi Glendora is a village in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The population was 285 at the 2000 census. History Glendora was developed by White Americans as a small sawmill site. Logs were floated down the river from around the vicinity of Webb to ...
, near the
Tallahatchie River The Tallahatchie River is a river in Mississippi which flows from Tippah County, through Tallahatchie County, to Leflore County, where it joins the Yalobusha River to form the Yazoo River. The river is navigable for about . At Money, Mississi ...
. The group drove back to Roy Bryant's home in Money, where they reportedly burned Emmett's clothes. In an interview with
William Bradford Huie William Bradford Huie (November 13, 1910 – November 20, 1986) was an American writer, investigative reporter, editor, national lecturer, and television host. His credits include twenty-one books that sold over 30 million copies worldwide. In ad ...
that was published in ''Look'' magazine in 1956, Bryant and Milam said that they intended to beat Till and throw him off an embankment into the river to frighten him. They told Huie that while they were beating Till, he called them bastards, declared he was as good as they and said that he had sexual encounters with white women. They put Till in the back of their truck, and drove to a cotton gin to take a fan—the only time they admitted to being worried, thinking that by this time in early daylight they would be spotted and accused of stealing—and drove for several miles along the river looking for a place to dispose of Till. They shot him by the river and weighted his body with the fan.Several major inconsistencies between what Bryant and Milam told interviewer William Bradford Huie and what they had told others were noted by the FBI in 2006. The pair of men told Huie they were sober, yet reported years later that they had been drinking. In the interview, they said they had driven what would have been looking for a place to dispose of Till's body, to the cotton gin to obtain the fan, and back again, which the FBI noted would be impossible in the time they were witnessed having returned. Several witnesses recalled that they saw Bryant, Milam, and two or more black men with Till's beaten body in the back of the pickup truck in Glendora, yet they did not tell Huie they were in Glendora. (FBI, 006 pp. 86–96.) Mose Wright stayed on his front porch for twenty minutes waiting for Till to return. He did not go back to bed. He and another man went into Money, got gasoline, and drove around trying to find Till. Unsuccessful, they returned home by 8:00 am. After hearing from Wright that he would not call the police because he feared for his life, Curtis Jones placed a call to the Leflore County sheriff, and another to his mother in Chicago. Distraught, she called Emmett's mother Mamie Till Bradley. Wright and his wife Elizabeth drove to Sumner, where Elizabeth's brother contacted the sheriff. Bryant and Milam were questioned by Leflore County sheriff George Smith. They admitted they had taken the boy from his great-uncle's yard, but claimed they had released him the same night in front of Bryant's store. Bryant and Milam were arrested for
kidnapping In criminal law, kidnapping is the unlawful confinement of a person against their will, often including transportation/asportation. The asportation and abduction element is typically but not necessarily conducted by means of force or fear: the p ...
. Word got out that Till was missing, and soon
Medgar Evers Medgar Wiley Evers (; July 2, 1925June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist and the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi, who was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith. Evers, a decorated U.S. Army combat veteran who had served i ...
, Mississippi state field secretary for the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...
(NAACP), and
Amzie Moore Amzie Moore (September 23, 1911 – February 1, 1982) was an African-American civil rights leader and entrepreneur in the Mississippi Delta. Early life Amzie Moore is one of the lesser known Civil Rights Movement leaders, but was extremely in ...
, head of the NAACP's
Bolivar County Bolivar County ( ) is a County (United States), county located on the western border of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 30,985. Its county seats are Rosedale, Mississippi, Roseda ...
chapter, became involved. They disguised themselves as cotton pickers and went into the cotton fields in search of any information that might help find Till.Hampton, p. 6. Three days after his abduction and murder, Till's swollen and disfigured body was found by two boys who were fishing in the Tallahatchie River. His head was very badly mutilated, he had been shot above the right ear, an eye was dislodged from the socket, there was evidence that he had been beaten on the back and the hips, and his body weighted by a fan blade, which was fastened around his neck with barbed wire. He was nude, but wearing a silver ring with the initials "L. T." and "May 25, 1943" carved in it.Many years later, there were allegations that Till had been castrated. (Mitchell, 2007) John Cothran, the deputy sheriff who was at the scene where Till was removed from the river testified, however, that apart from the decomposition typical of a body being submerged in water, his genitals had been intact. (FBI 006 Appendix Court transcript, p. 176.) Mamie Till-Mobley also confirmed this in her memoirs. (Till-Bradley and Benson, p. 135.) His face was unrecognizable due to trauma and having been submerged in water. Mose Wright was called to the river to identify Till. The silver ring that Till was wearing was removed, returned to Wright, and next passed on to the district attorney as evidence.


Funeral and reaction

Although lynchings and racially motivated murders had occurred throughout the South for decades, the circumstances surrounding Till's murder and the timing acted as a catalyst to attract national attention to the case of a 14-year-old boy who had allegedly been killed for breaching a social
caste Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...
system. Till's murder aroused feelings about segregation, law enforcement, relations between the North and South, the social
status quo is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social, political, religious or military issues. In the sociological sense, the ''status quo'' refers to the current state of social structure and/or values. W ...
in Mississippi, the activities of the NAACP and the
White Citizens' Councils The Citizens' Councils (commonly referred to as the White Citizens' Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash ...
, and the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, all of which were played out in a drama staged in newspapers all over the U.S. and abroad. After Till went missing, a three-paragraph story was printed in the ''
Greenwood Commonwealth ''The Greenwood Commonwealth'' is a newspaper serving in and operating out of Greenwood, Mississippi. It began publication in 1896.embalmed Embalming is the art and science of preserving human remains by treating them (in its modern form with chemicals) to forestall decomposition. This is usually done to make the deceased suitable for public or private viewing as part of the funeral ...
while in Mississippi. Mamie Till Bradley demanded that the body be sent to Chicago; she later said that she worked to halt an immediate burial in Mississippi and called several local and state authorities in Illinois and Mississippi to make sure that her son was returned to Chicago. A doctor did not examine Till post-mortem. Mississippi's governor,
Hugh L. White Hugh Lawson White (August 19, 1881September 20, 1965) was an American politician from Mississippi and a member of the Democratic Party. He served two non-consecutive terms as Governor of Mississippi (1936–1940, 1952–1956). Early life Whi ...
, deplored the murder, asserting that local authorities should pursue a "vigorous prosecution". He sent a telegram to the national offices of the NAACP, promising a full investigation and assuring them "Mississippi does not condone such conduct". Delta residents, both black and white, also distanced themselves from Till's murder, finding the circumstances abhorrent. Local newspaper editorials denounced the murderers without question. Leflore County Deputy Sheriff John Cothran stated, "The white people around here feel pretty mad about the way that poor little boy was treated, and they won't stand for this." Soon, however, discourse about Till's murder became more complex. Robert B. Patterson, executive secretary of the segregationist White Citizens' Council, used Till's death to claim that
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
policies were to provide for blacks' safety and that their efforts were being neutralized by the NAACP. In response, NAACP executive secretary
Roy Wilkins Roy Ottoway Wilkins (August 30, 1901 – September 8, 1981) was a prominent activist in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s. Wilkins' most notable role was his leadership of the National Association for the ...
characterized the incident as a lynching and said that Mississippi was trying to maintain white supremacy through murder. He said, "there is in the entire state no restraining influence of decency, not in the state capital, among the daily newspapers, the clergy, nor any segment of the so-called better citizens." Mamie Till Bradley told a reporter that she would seek legal aid to help law enforcement find her son's killers and that the State of Mississippi should share the financial responsibility. She was misquoted; it was reported as "Mississippi is going to pay for this." The A. A. Rayner Funeral Home in Chicago received Till's body. Upon arrival, Bradley insisted on viewing it to make a positive identification, later stating that the stench from it was noticeable two blocks away. She decided to have an open-casket funeral, saying: "There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see." Tens of thousands of people lined the street outside the mortuary to view Till's body, and days later thousands more attended his funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. Photographs of his mutilated corpse circulated around the country, notably appearing in '' Jet'' magazine and ''
The Chicago Defender ''The Chicago Defender'' is a Chicago-based online African-American newspaper. It was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind. Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim ...
'', both black publications, generating intense public reaction. According to ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' and ''
Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', Chicago's black community was "aroused as it has not been over any similar act in recent history".When ''Jet'' publisher John H. Johnson died in 2005, people who remembered his career considered his decision to publish Till's open-casket photograph his greatest moment. Michigan congressman
Charles Diggs Charles Coles Diggs Jr. (December 2, 1922 – August 24, 1998) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Michigan who served in the state senate and U.S. House of Representatives. He was the first African American elected to Congress ...
recalled that for the emotion the image stimulated, it was "probably one of the greatest media products in the last 40 or 50 years". (Dewan, 2005)
''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' later selected one of the ''Jet'' photographs showing Mamie Till over the mutilated body of her dead son, as one of the 100 "most influential images of all time": "For almost a century, African Americans were lynched with regularity and impunity. Now, thanks to a mother's determination to expose the barbarousness of the crime, the public could no longer pretend to ignore what they couldn't see." Till was buried on September 6 in
Burr Oak Cemetery Burr Oak Cemetery is a cemetery located in Alsip, Illinois, United States, a suburb southwest of Chicago, Illinois. Established in 1927, Burr Oak was one of the few early Chicago cemeteries focused on the needs of the African-American community, ...
in
Alsip, Illinois Alsip is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 19,063 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Chicago metropolitan area. Alsip was settled in the 1830s by German and Dutch farmers. The village is named after Frank ...
. News about Emmett Till spread to both coasts. Chicago Mayor
Richard J. Daley Richard Joseph Daley (May 15, 1902 – December 20, 1976) was an American politician who served as the Mayor of Chicago from 1955 and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee from 1953 until his death. He has been cal ...
and Illinois Governor
William Stratton William Grant Stratton (February 26, 1914 – March 2, 2001), was the 32nd governor of Illinois from 1953 to 1961. Early life and career Born February 26, 1914 in Ingleside, Lake County, Illinois, the son of William J. Stratton, an Illinoi ...
also became involved, urging Mississippi Governor White to see that justice was done. The tone in Mississippi newspapers changed dramatically. They falsely reported riots in the funeral home in Chicago. Bryant and Milam appeared in photos smiling and wearing military uniforms, and Carolyn Bryant's beauty and virtue were extolled. Rumors of an invasion of outraged blacks and northern whites were printed throughout the state, and were taken seriously by the Leflore County Sheriff. T. R. M. Howard, a local businessman, surgeon, and civil rights proponent and one of the wealthiest black people in the state, warned of a "second civil war" if "slaughtering of Negroes" was allowed. Following Roy Wilkins' comments, white opinion began to shift. According to historian Stephen J. Whitfield, a specific brand of
xenophobia Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
in the South was particularly strong in Mississippi. Whites were urged to reject the influence of Northern opinion and agitation.Whitfield, pp. 28–30. This independent attitude was profound enough in Tallahatchie County that it earned the nickname "The Freestate of Tallahatchie", according to a former sheriff, "because people here do what they damn well please", making the county often difficult to govern. Tallahatchie County Sheriff Clarence Strider, who initially positively identified Till's body and stated that the case against Milam and Bryant was "pretty good", on September 3 announced his doubts that the body pulled from the Tallahatchie River was that of Till. He speculated that the boy was probably still alive. Strider suggested that the recovered body had been planted by the NAACP: a corpse stolen by T. R. M. Howard, who colluded to place Till's ring on it. Strider changed his account after comments were published in the press denigrating the people of Mississippi, later saying: "The last thing I wanted to do was to defend those
peckerwood ''Peckerwood'' is a term used in the Southern United States for a woodpecker which is also used as an offensive epithet toward white people, especially poor rural whites. Originally an ethnic slur, the term has been embraced by a subculture rela ...
s. But I just had no choice about it."Following the trial, Strider told a television reporter that should anyone who had sent him hate mail arrive in Mississippi, "the same thing's gonna happen to them that happened to Emmett Till". (Whitfield, p. 44.) Bryant and Milam were indicted for murder. The state's prosecuting attorney, Hamilton Caldwell, was not confident that he could get a conviction in a case of white violence against a black male accused of insulting a white woman. A local black paper was surprised at the indictment and praised the decision, as did ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. The high-profile comments published in Northern newspapers and by the NAACP were of concern to the prosecuting attorney,
Gerald Chatham Gerald Weissinger Chatham (February 17, 1906 – October 9, 1956) was an American lawyer, best known for acting as lead prosecutor in the Emmett Till case in 1955. Biography Chatham was born in Hernando, Mississippi in 1906. He attended the Un ...
; he worried that his office would not be able to secure a guilty verdict, despite the compelling evidence. Having limited funds, Bryant and Milam initially had difficulty finding attorneys to represent them, but five attorneys at a Sumner law firm offered their services ''
pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...
''. Their supporters placed collection jars in stores and other public places in the Delta, eventually gathering $10,000 for the defense.


Trial

The trial was held in the county courthouse in Sumner, the western seat of Tallahatchie County, because Till's body was found in this area. Sumner had one boarding house; the small town was besieged by reporters from all over the country.
David Halberstam David Halberstam (April 10, 1934 April 23, 2007) was an American writer, journalist, and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, Korean War, and later ...
called the trial "the first great media event of the civil rights movement". A reporter who had covered the trials of Bruno Hauptmann and
Machine Gun Kelly George Kelly Barnes (July 18, 1895 – July 18, 1954), better known by his pseudonym "Machine Gun Kelly", was an American gangster from Memphis, Tennessee, active during the Prohibition era. His nickname came from his favorite weapon, a Thom ...
remarked that this was the most publicity for any trial he had ever seen. No hotels were open to black visitors. Mamie Till Bradley arrived to testify, and the trial also attracted black congressman
Charles Diggs Charles Coles Diggs Jr. (December 2, 1922 – August 24, 1998) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Michigan who served in the state senate and U.S. House of Representatives. He was the first African American elected to Congress ...
from Michigan. Bradley, Diggs, and several black reporters stayed at T. R. M. Howard's home in Mound Bayou. Located on a large lot and surrounded by Howard's armed guards, it resembled a compound. The day before the start of the trial, a young black man named Frank Young arrived to tell Howard he knew of two witnesses to the crime. Levi "Too Tight" Collins and Henry Lee Loggins were black employees of Leslie Milam, J. W.'s brother, in whose shed Till was beaten. Collins and Loggins were spotted with J. W. Milam, Bryant, and Till. The prosecution team was unaware of Collins and Loggins. Sheriff Strider, however, booked them into the
Charleston, Mississippi Charleston is a city in north central Mississippi and one of the two county seats of Tallahatchie County, which is located on both sides of the Tallahatchie River. This city is located east of the river and its population was 2,193 at the 2010 ce ...
, jail to keep them from testifying. The trial was held in September 1955 and lasted for five days; attendees remembered that the weather was very hot. The courtroom was filled to capacity with 280 spectators; black attendees sat in segregated sections. Press from major national newspapers attended, including black publications; black reporters were required to sit in the segregated black section and away from the white press, farther from the jury. Sheriff Strider welcomed black spectators coming back from lunch with a cheerful, "Hello, Niggers!" Some visitors from the North found the court to be run with surprising informality. Jury members were allowed to drink beer on duty, and many white male spectators wore handguns. The defense sought to cast doubt on the identity of the body pulled from the river. They said it could not be positively identified, and they questioned whether Till was dead at all. The defense also asserted that although Bryant and Milam had taken Till from his great-uncle's house, they had released him that night. The defense attorneys attempted to prove that Mose Wright—who was addressed as "Uncle Mose" by the prosecution and "Mose" by the defense—could not identify Bryant and Milam as the men who took Till from his cabin. They noted that only Milam's flashlight had been in use that night, and no other lights in the house were turned on. Milam and Bryant had identified themselves to Wright the evening they took Till; Wright said he had only seen Milam clearly. Wright's testimony was considered remarkably courageous. It may have been the first time in the South that a black man had testified to the guilt of a white man in court—and lived. Journalist James Hicks, who worked for the black news wire service, the National Negro Publishers Association (later renamed the
National Newspaper Publishers Association The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), formerly the National Negro Publishers Association, is an association of African American newspaper publishers from across the United States. History The NNPA was founded in 1940 when John H ...
), was present in the courtroom; he was especially impressed that Wright stood to identify Milam, pointing to him and saying "There he is",The trial transcript says "There he is", although witnesses recall variations of "Dar he", "Thar he", or "Thar's the one". Wright's family protested that Mose Wright was made to sound illiterate by newspaper accounts and insisted he said "There he is." (Mitchell, 2007) calling it a historic moment and one filled with "electricity". A writer for the ''
New York Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com. It was established ...
'' noted that following his identification, Wright sat "with a lurch which told better than anything else the cost in strength to him of the thing he had done". A reporter who covered the trial for the ''
New Orleans Times-Picayune ''The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate'' is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana, since January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 2019 acquisition of ''The Times-Picayune'' (itself a result of th ...
'' said it was "the most dramatic thing I saw in my career". (Originally published in the ''Jackson Clarion-Ledger''.) Mamie Till Bradley testified that she had instructed her son to watch his manners in Mississippi and that should a situation ever come to his being asked to get on his knees to ask forgiveness of a white person, he should do it without a thought. The defense questioned her identification of her son in the casket in Chicago and a $400 life insurance policy she had taken out on him.Beito and Beito, pp. 124–126. While the trial progressed, Leflore County Sheriff George Smith, Howard, and several reporters, both black and white, attempted to locate Collins and Loggins. They could not, but found three witnesses who had seen Collins and Loggins with Milam and Bryant on Leslie Milam's property. Two of them testified that they heard someone being beaten, blows, and cries. One testified so quietly the judge ordered him several times to speak louder; he said he heard the victim call out: "Mama, Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy." Sheriff Strider testified for the defense of his theory that Till was alive and that the body retrieved from the river was white. A doctor from Greenwood stated on the stand that the body was too decomposed to identify, and therefore had been in the water too long for it to be Till.Beito and Beito, p. 126. Carolyn Bryant was allowed to testify in court, but because Judge Curtis Swango ruled in favor of the prosecution's objection that her testimony was irrelevant to Till's abduction and murder, the jury was not present. In the event that the defendants were convicted, the defense wanted her testimony on record to aid in a possible appeal. In the concluding statements, one prosecuting attorney said that what Till did was wrong, but that his action warranted a spanking, not murder. Gerald Chatham passionately called for justice and mocked the sheriff and doctor's statements that alluded to a conspiracy. Mamie Bradley indicated she was very impressed with his summation. The defense stated that the prosecution's theory of the events the night Till was murdered was improbable, and said the jury's "forefathers would turn over in their graves" if they convicted Bryant and Milam. Only three outcomes were possible in Mississippi for capital murder: life imprisonment, the
death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
, or
acquittal In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as criminal law is concerned. The finality of an acquittal is dependent on the jurisdiction. In some countries, such as the ...
. On September 23 the all-white, all-male jury (both women and blacks had been banned) acquitted both defendants after a 67-minute deliberation; one juror said, "If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long." In post-trial analyses, the blame for the outcome varied. Mamie Till Bradley was criticized for not crying enough on the stand. The jury was noted to have been picked almost exclusively from the hill country section of Tallahatchie County, which, due to its poorer economic make-up, found whites and blacks competing for land and other agrarian opportunities. Unlike the population living closer to the river (and thus closer to Bryant and Milam in Leflore County), who possessed a ''
noblesse oblige ''Noblesse oblige'' (; ; literally “nobility obliges”) is a French expression from a time when French (more specifically, Anglo-Norman) was the language of the English nobility, and retains in English the meaning that nobility extends beyo ...
'' outlook toward blacks, according to historian Stephen Whitaker, those in the eastern part of the county were virulent in their racism. The prosecution was criticized for dismissing any potential juror who knew Milam or Bryant personally, for fear that such a juror would vote to acquit. Afterward, Whitaker noted that this had been a mistake, as those who knew the defendants usually disliked them. One juror voted twice to convict, but on the third discussion, voted with the rest of the jury to acquit. In later interviews, the jurors acknowledged that they knew Bryant and Milam were guilty, but simply did not believe that life imprisonment or the death penalty were fit punishment for whites who had killed a black man. However, two jurors said as late as 2005 that they believed the defense's case. They also said that the prosecution had not proved that Till had died, nor that it was his body that was removed from the river. In November 1955, a grand jury declined to indict Bryant and Milam for kidnapping, despite their own admissions of having taken Till. Mose Wright and a young man named Willie Reed, who testified to seeing Milam enter the shed from which screams and blows were heard, both testified in front of the grand jury. After the trial, T. R. M. Howard paid the costs of relocating to Chicago for Wright, Reed, and another black witness who testified against Milam and Bryant, in order to protect the three witnesses from reprisals for having testified.Beito and Beito, p. 127. Reed, who later changed his name to Willie Louis to avoid being found, continued to live in the Chicago area until his death on July 18, 2013. He avoided publicity and even kept his history secret from his wife until she was told by a relative. Reed began to speak publicly about the case in the PBS documentary '' The Murder of Emmett Till'', aired in 2003.


Media discourse

Newspapers in major international cities and religious, and
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
publications reported outrage about the verdict and strong criticism of American society. Southern newspapers, particularly in Mississippi, wrote that the court system had done its job. Till's story continued to make the news for weeks following the trial, sparking debate in newspapers, among the NAACP and various high-profile segregationists about justice for blacks and the propriety of Jim Crow society. In October 1955, the ''Jackson Daily News'' reported facts about Till's father that had been suppressed by the U.S. military. While serving in Italy, Louis Till was court-martialed for the rape of two women and the killing of a third. He was found guilty and executed by hanging by the Army near
Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...
in July 1945. Mamie Till Bradley and her family knew none of this, having been told only that Louis had been killed for "willful misconduct". Mississippi senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis probed Army records and revealed Louis Till's crimes. Although Emmett Till's murder trial was over, news about his father was carried on the front pages of Mississippi newspapers for weeks in October and November 1955. This renewed debate about Emmett Till's actions and Carolyn Bryant's integrity. Stephen Whitfield writes that the lack of attention paid to identifying or finding Till is "strange" compared to the amount of published discourse about his father.Whitfield, p. 117. According to historians Davis Houck and Matthew Grindy, "Louis Till became a most important rhetorical pawn in the high-stakes game of north versus south, black versus white, NAACP versus White Citizens' Councils". In 2016, reviewing the facts of the rapes and murder for which Louis Till had been executed,
John Edgar Wideman John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus o ...
posited that, given the timing of the publicity about Emmett's father, although the defendants had already confessed to taking Emmett from his uncle's house, the post-murder trial grand jury refused to even indict them for kidnapping. Wideman also suggested that the conviction and punishment of Louis Till may have been racially motivated, referring to his trial as a "
kangaroo court A kangaroo court is a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides, and is typically convened ad hoc. A kangaroo court may ignore due process and come ...
-martial". Protected against
double jeopardy In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence (primarily in common law jurisdictions) that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare case ...
, Bryant and Milam struck a deal with ''Look'' magazine in 1956 to tell their story to journalist William Bradford Huie for between $3,600 and $4,000. The interview took place in the law firm of the attorneys who had defended Bryant and Milam. Huie did not ask the questions; Bryant and Milam's own attorneys did. Neither attorney had heard their clients' accounts of the murder before. According to Huie, the older Milam was more articulate and sure of himself than the younger Bryant. Milam admitted to shooting Till and neither of them believed they were guilty or that they had done anything wrong. Reaction to Huie's interview with Bryant and Milam was explosive. Their brazen admission that they had murdered Till caused prominent civil rights leaders to push the federal government harder to investigate the case. Till's murder contributed to congressional passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1957 The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwigh ...
: it authorized the
U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
to intervene in local law enforcement issues when individual civil rights were being compromised. Huie's interview, in which Milam and Bryant said they had acted alone, overshadowed inconsistencies in earlier versions of the stories. As a consequence, details about others who had possibly been involved in Till's abduction and murder, or the subsequent
cover-up A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrongdoing, error, incompetence, or other embarrassing information. Research has distinguished personal cover-ups (covering up one's own misdeeds) from relational co ...
, were forgotten, according to historians David and Linda Beito.A month after Huie's article appeared in ''Look'', T. R. M. Howard worked with Olive Arnold Adams of ''
The New York Age ''The New York Age'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1887. It was widely considered one of the most prominent African-American newspapers of its time.
'' to publish a version of the events that agreed more with the testimony at the trial and what Howard had been told by Frank Young. It appeared as a booklet titled ''Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till''. Howard also acted as a source for an as-yet-unidentified reporter using the
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
Amos Dixon in the ''
California Eagle The ''California Eagle'' (1879–1964) was an African-American newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded as ''The Owl'' in 1879 by John J. Neimore. Charlotta Bass became owner of the paper after Neimore's death in 1912. She owned and ...
''. Dixon wrote a series of articles implicating three black men, and Leslie Milam, whom he reported had participated in Till's murder in some way. ''Time Bomb'' and Dixon's articles had no lasting effect in the shaping of public opinion. Huie's article in the far more widely circulated ''Look'' became the most commonly accepted version of events. (Beito and Beito, pp. 150–151.)


Later events

Till's murder increased fears in the local black community that they would be subjected to violence and the law would not protect them. According to Deloris Melton Gresham, whose father was killed a few months after Till, "At that time, they used to say that 'it's open season on n*****s.' Kill'em and get away with it." After Bryant and Milam admitted to Huie that they had killed Till, the support base of the two men eroded in Mississippi. Many of their former friends and supporters, including those who had contributed to their defense funds, cut them off. Blacks boycotted their shops, which went bankrupt and closed, and banks refused to grant them loans to plant crops. After struggling to secure a loan and find someone who would rent to him, Milam managed to secure and a $4,000 loan to plant cotton, but blacks refused to work for him. He was forced to pay whites higher wages. Eventually, Milam and Bryant relocated to
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
, but their infamy followed them; they continued to generate animosity from locals. In 1961, while in Texas, when Bryant recognized the license plate of a Tallahatchie County resident, he called out a greeting and identified himself. The resident, upon hearing the name, drove away without speaking to Bryant. After several years, they returned to Mississippi. Milam found work as a heavy equipment operator, but ill health forced him into retirement. Over the years, Milam was tried for offenses including assault and battery, writing bad checks, and using a stolen credit card. He died of spinal cancer on December 30, 1980, at the age of 61. Bryant worked as a welder while in Texas, until increasing blindness forced him to give up this employment. At some point, he and Carolyn divorced; he remarried in 1980. He opened a store in Ruleville, Mississippi. He was convicted in 1984 and 1988 of food stamp fraud. In a 1985 interview, he denied killing Till despite having admitted to it in 1956, but said: "if Emmett Till hadn't got out of line, it probably wouldn't have happened to him." Fearing economic boycotts and retaliation, Bryant lived a private life and refused to be photographed or reveal the exact location of his store, explaining: "this new generation is different and I don't want to worry about a bullet some dark night". He died of cancer on September 1, 1994, at the age of 63. Till's mother married Gene Mobley, became a teacher, and changed her surname to Till-Mobley. She continued to educate people about her son's murder. In 1992, Till-Mobley had the opportunity to listen while Bryant was interviewed about his involvement in Till's murder. With Bryant unaware that Till-Mobley was listening, he asserted that Till had ruined his life, expressed no remorse, and said: "Emmett Till is dead. I don't know why he can't just stay dead."Till-Mobley and Benson, p. 261. In 1996, documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, who was greatly moved by Till's open-casket photograph, started background research for a feature film he planned to make about Till's murder. He asserted that as many as 14 people may have been involved, including Carolyn Bryant Donham (who by this point had remarried). Mose Wright heard someone with "a lighter voice" affirm that Till was the one in his front yard immediately before Bryant and Milam drove away with the boy. Beauchamp spent the next nine years producing ''
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till ''The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till'' is a 2005 documentary film about the murder of Emmett Till. It was directed by Keith Beauchamp. The film contributed to the case being reopened by the U.S. Department of Justice. Background In August 195 ...
'', released in 2003. That same year,
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
aired an installment of ''
American Experience ''American Experience'' is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American his ...
'' titled ''The Murder of Emmett Till''. In 2005,
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
journalist
Ed Bradley Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. (June 22, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American broadcast journalist and news anchor. He was best known for his reporting on ''60 Minutes'' and CBS News. Bradley began his journalism career as a radio news repo ...
aired a ''
60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...
'' report investigating the Till murder, part of which showed him tracking down Carolyn Bryant at her home in
Greenville, Mississippi Greenville is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 34,400 at the 2010 census. It is located in the area of historic cotton plantations and culture known as the Mississippi Delta. Hi ...
. A 1991 book written by Stephen J. Whitfield, another by Christopher Metress in 2002, and Mamie Till-Mobley's memoirs the next year all posed questions as to who was involved in the murder and cover-up. Federal authorities in the 21st century worked to resolve the questions about the identity of the body pulled from the Tallahatchie River. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was reopening the case to determine whether anyone other than Milam and Bryant was involved.
David T. Beito David T. Beito (born 1956) is a historian and professor of history at the University of Alabama. Beito is the founder and one of the key contributors to the group weblog Liberty and Power, which is located at the History News Network. He manages t ...
, a professor at the
University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a Public university, public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and la ...
, states that Till's murder "has this mythic quality like the
Kennedy assassination John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 un ...
". The DOJ had undertaken to investigate numerous cold cases dating to the civil rights movement, in the hope of finding new evidence in other murders as well. The body was exhumed, and the
Cook County Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. As of 20 ...
coroner A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into Manner of death, the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within th ...
conducted an autopsy in 2005. Using DNA from Till's relatives, dental comparisons to images taken of Till, and anthropological analysis, the exhumed body was positively identified as that of Till. It had extensive cranial damage, a broken left femur, and two broken wrists. Metallic fragments found in the skull were consistent with bullets being fired from a .45 caliber gun. In February 2007, a Leflore County grand jury, composed primarily of black jurors and empaneled by Joyce Chiles, a black prosecutor, found no credible basis for Beauchamp's claim that 14 people took part in Till's abduction and murder. Beauchamp was angry with the finding. David Beito and
Juan Williams Juan Antonio Williams (born April 10, 1954) is a Panamanian-born American journalist and political analyst for Fox News Channel. He writes for several newspapers, including ''The Washington Post'', ''The New York Times'', and ''The Wall Street ...
, who worked on the reading materials for the ''
Eyes on the Prize ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement'' is an American television series and 14-part documentary about the 20th-century civil rights movement in the United States. The documentary originally aired on the PBS network, and it also ...
'' documentary, were critical of Beauchamp for trying to revise history and taking attention away from other
cold case A cold case is a crime, or a suspected crime, that has not yet been fully resolved and is not the subject of a current criminal investigation, but for which new information could emerge from new witness testimony, re-examined archives, new or re ...
s. The grand jury failed to find sufficient cause for charges against Carolyn Bryant Donham. Neither the FBI nor the grand jury found any credible evidence that Henry Lee Loggins, identified by Beauchamp as a suspect who could be charged, had any role in the crime. Other than Loggins, Beauchamp refused to name any of the people he alleged were involved.


Historical markers

The first highway marker remembering Emmett Till, erected in 2006, was defaced with "KKK", and then completely covered with black paint. In 2007, eight markers were erected at sites associated with Till's lynching. The marker at the "River Spot" where Till's body was found was torn down in 2008, presumably thrown in the river. A replacement sign received more than 100 bullet holes over the next few years. Another replacement was installed in June 2018, and in July it was vandalized by bullets. Three
University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi (byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment. ...
students were suspended from their fraternity after posing in front of the bullet-riddled marker, with guns, and uploading the photo to
Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
. As stated by Jerry Mitchell, "It is not clear whether the fraternity students shot the sign or are simply posing before it." In 2019, a fourth sign was erected. It is made of steel, weighs , is over thick, and is said by its manufacturer to be indestructible.


Claim that Carolyn Bryant recanted her testimony

In 2017, historian and author Timothy Tyson released details of a 2008 interview with Carolyn Bryant, during which, he alleged, she had disclosed that she had fabricated parts of her testimony at the trial. According to Tyson's account of the interview, Bryant retracted her testimony that Till had grabbed her around her waist and uttered obscenities, saying "that part's not true". The jury did not hear Bryant's testimony at the trial as the judge had ruled it inadmissible, but the court spectators heard. The defense wanted Bryant's testimony as evidence for a possible appeal in case of a conviction. In the 2007 interview, the 72-year-old Bryant said she could not remember the rest of the events that occurred between her and Till in the grocery store. She also said: "nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him". Tyson said that Roy Bryant had been abusive toward Carolyn, and "it was clear she was frightened of her husband". Tyson believed Bryant embellished her testimony under coercive circumstances. Bryant described Milam as "domineering and brutal and not a kind man". An editorial in ''The New York Times'' said, regarding Bryant's admission that portions of her testimony were false: "This admission is a reminder of how black lives were sacrificed to white lies in places like Mississippi. It also raises anew the question of why no one was brought to justice in the most notorious racially motivated murder of the 20th century, despite an extensive investigation by the F.B.I." ''The New York Times'' quoted Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till's, who said: "I was hoping that one day she ryantwould admit it, so it matters to me that she did, and it gives me some satisfaction. It's important to people understanding how the word of a white person against a black person was law, and a lot of black people lost their lives because of it. It really speaks to history, it shows what black people went through in those days." However, the 'recanting' claim made by Tyson was not on his tape-recording of the interview. "It is true that that part is not on tape because I was setting up the tape recorder" Tyson said. The support Tyson provided to back up his claim, was a handwritten note that he said had been made at the time. In a report to Congress in March 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice stated that it was reopening the investigation into Till's death due to new information. In December 2021, the DOJ announced that it had closed its investigation in the case.


Discovery of unserved arrest warrant

In June 2022, an unserved arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant (now known as Carolyn Bryant Donham), dated August 29, 1955 and signed by the Leflore County Clerk, was discovered in a courthouse basement by members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation. Following the discovery, Till's family called for Donham's arrest. However, the district attorney declined to charge Donham, and said that there was no new evidence to reopen the case. In August 2022, a grand jury concluded there was insufficient evidence to indict Donham. In December 2022
Bowling Green, Kentucky Bowling Green is a home rule-class city and the county seat of Warren County, Kentucky, United States. Founded by pioneers in 1798, Bowling Green was the provisional capital of Confederate Kentucky during the American Civil War. As of the 2 ...
, cancelled its annual Christmas parade scheduled for December 3, 2022, due to threats of violence against groups who planned to protest outside Donham's home, an apartment at Shive Lane, Bowling Green. The protests took place peacefully.


Release of Carolyn Bryant Donham memoir

In 2022, '' I Am More Than a Wolf Whistle'', the 99-page memoir of Carolyn Bryant Donham, was copied and given to NewsOne by an anonymous source. The text had been given to the
University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...
to privately hold until 2036. The full text was also posted online and can be viewed as a PDF. The memoir had been prepared by Donham's daughter-in-law Marsha Bryant, who had shared the material with Timothy Tyson, with the understanding that Tyson would edit the memoir. However, Tyson said there was no such agreement, and placed the memoir at the Southern Historical Collection at the
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
library archives, with access restricted for twenty years or until Donham's death.


Influence on civil rights

Till's case attracted widespread attention because of the brutality of the lynching, the victim's young age, and the acquittal of the two men who later admitted killing him. It became emblematic of the injustices suffered by blacks in the
South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
. In 1955, ''The Chicago Defender'' urged its readers to react to the acquittal by voting in large numbers; this was to counter the disenfranchisement since 1890 of most blacks in Mississippi by the white-dominated legislature; other southern states followed this model, excluding hundreds of thousands of citizens from politics. Myrlie Evers], the widow of Medgar Evers, said in 1985 that Till's case resonated so strongly because it "shook the foundations of Mississippi—both black and white, because ... with the white community ... it had become nationally publicized ... with us as blacks ... it said, even a child was not safe from racism and bigotry and death." The NAACP asked Mamie Till Bradley to tour the country relating the events of her son's life, death, and the trial of his murderers. It was one of the most successful fundraising campaigns the NAACP had ever conducted. Journalist
Louis Lomax Louis Emanuel Lomax (August 16, 1922 – July 30, 1970) was an African-American journalist and author. He was also the first African-American television journalist. Early years Lomax was born in Valdosta, Georgia. His parents were Emanuel C. Smi ...
acknowledges Till's death to be the start of what he terms the "Negro revolt", and scholar Clenora Hudson-Weems characterizes Till as a "sacrificial lamb" for civil rights. NAACP operative Amzie Moore considers Till the start of the Civil Rights Movement, at the very least, in Mississippi. The 1987 Emmy award-winning documentary series ''Eyes on the Prize'', begins with the murder of Emmett Till. Accompanying written materials for the series, ''Eyes on the Prize'' and ''Voices of Freedom'' (for the second time period), exhaustively explore the major figures and events of the Civil Rights Movement. Stephen Whitaker states that, as a result of the attention Till's death and the trial received, In Montgomery a few months after the murder, Rosa Parks attended a rally for Till, led by
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
Soon after, she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white passenger. The incident sparked a year-long well-organized grassroots boycott of the public bus system. The boycott was designed to force the city to change its segregation policies. Parks later said when she did not get up and move to the rear of the bus, "I thought of Emmett Till and I just couldn't go back." According to author
Clayborne Carson Clayborne Carson (born June 15, 1944) is an American academic who is a professor of history at Stanford University and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Since 1985, he has directed the Martin Luther King ...
, Till's death and the widespread coverage of the students integrating Little Rock Central High School in 1957 were especially profound for younger blacks: "It was out of this festering discontent and an awareness of earlier isolated protests that the sit-ins of the 1960s were born." After seeing pictures of Till's mutilated body, in
Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
, young Cassius Clay (later famed boxer
Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali (; born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century, a ...
) and a friend took out their frustration by vandalizing a local railyard, causing a locomotive engine to derail. In 1963,
Sunflower County Sunflower County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 29,450. Its largest city and county seat is Indianola. Sunflower County comprises the Indianola, MS Micropolitan Statistical Are ...
resident and sharecropper
Fannie Lou Hamer Fannie Lou Hamer (; Townsend; October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights, voting and women's rights activist, Community organizing, community organizer, and a leader in the civil rights movement. She was the co-foun ...
was jailed and beaten for attempting to register to vote. The next year, she led a massive
voter registration drive A voter registration campaign or voter registration drive is an effort by a government authority, political party or other entity to register to vote persons otherwise entitled to vote. In some countries, voter registration is automatic, and is ca ...
in the Delta region, and volunteers worked on Freedom Summer throughout the state. Before 1954, 265 black people were registered to vote in three Delta counties, where they were a majority of the population. At this time, blacks made up 41% of the total state population. The summer Emmett Till was killed, the number of registered voters in those three counties dropped to 90. By the end of 1955, fourteen Mississippi counties had no registered black voters. The Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 registered 63,000 black voters in a simplified process administered by the project; they formed their own political party because they were closed out of the Democratic Regulars in Mississippi.


Legacy and honors

* A statue was unveiled in Denver in 1976 (and has since been moved to
Pueblo, Colorado Pueblo () is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, Pueblo County, Colorado ...
) featuring Till with
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
* In 1984, a section of 71st Street in Chicago was named "Emmett Till Road" and in 2005, the 71st street bridge was named in his honor. * In 1989, Till was included among the forty names of people who had died in the Civil Rights Movement; they are listed as
martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...
s on the granite sculpture of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. * A demonstration for Till was held in 2000 in Selma, Alabama, on the 35th anniversary of the march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. His mother Mamie Till-Mobley attended and later wrote in her memoirs: "I realized that Emmett had achieved the significant impact in death that he had been denied in life. Even so, I had never wanted Emmett to be a martyr. I only wanted him to be a good son. Although I realized all the great things that had been accomplished largely because of the sacrifices made by so many people, I found myself wishing that somehow we could have done it another way." * In 2005, James McCosh Elementary School in Chicago, where Till had been a student, was renamed the "Emmett Louis Till Math And Science Academy". * In 2006, the "Emmett Till Memorial Highway" was dedicated between Greenwood and
Tutwiler, Mississippi Tutwiler is a town in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, United States. The population at the 2010 census was 3,550. History In 1899, Tom Tutwiler, a civil engineer for a local railroad, made his headquarters seven miles northwest of Sumner. Th ...
; this was the route his body was taken to the train station, to be returned to his mother for burial in Chicago. It intersects with the H. C. "Clarence" Strider Memorial Highway. * In 2006, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission was established by the Tallahatchie Board of Supervisors * In 2007, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission issued a formal apology to Till's family at an event attended by 400 people. It reads:
We the citizens of Tallahatchie County recognize that the Emmett Till case was a terrible miscarriage of justice. We state candidly and with deep regret the failure to effectively pursue justice. We wish to say to the family of Emmett Till that we are profoundly sorry for what was done in this community to your loved one.
* The same year, Georgia congressman
John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
sponsored a bill to provide a plan for investigating and prosecuting unsolved (cold case) Civil Rights-era murders. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act was signed into law in 2008. * In 2008, a memorial plaque that was erected in Tallahatchie County, next to the Tallahatchie River at Graball Landing where Till's body was retrieved, was stolen and never recovered. The plaque was a "frequent target for racist vandalism". The location is in a remote area and down a gravel road, meaning that vandals had to go out of the way to get to it. Its replacement was soon also shot up, as was the replacement sign after that. In October 2019, a new bulletproof sign costing over $10,000, and weighing over was installed. In November 2019, a group of white supremacists was caught making a propaganda video in front of the sign raising new concerns that more vandalism was being planned. The group was carrying a white flag with a black St. Andrews cross, a flag commonly used by a racist
Neo-Confederate Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light. The League of the South, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other neo-Confederate organ ...
group called the
League of the South The League of the South (LS) is an American white nationalist, neo-Confederate, white supremacist organization, headquartered in Killen, Alabama, which states that its ultimate goal is "a free and independent Southern republic". The group def ...
. The group quickly scattered when they set off alarms designed to protect the sign. * The
Tallahatchie County Courthouse The Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse is located in Sumner, Mississippi, in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The county courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 6, 2007. It is located at 108 Main St ...
in Sumner, site of the 1955 trial of Till's killers, was restored and re-opened in 2012. The Emmett Till Interpretive Center opened across the street and is also serving as a community center. * The Emmett Till Memorial Project is an associated website and smartphone app to commemorate Till's death and his life. It identifies 51 sites in the Mississippi Delta associated with him.Emmett Till Interpretive Center
official website
On August 29, 2015, the Center held a 60th anniversary event. *In 2015,
Florida State University Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the st ...
Libraries created the Emmett Till archives. * In 2020, the
National Trust for Historic Preservation The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a privately funded, nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that works in the field of historic preservation in the United States. The member-supported organization was founded in 1949 by ...
named Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, the site of Till's funeral, as one of America's most endangered historic places. *In 2022, the
U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...
voted to award Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, the
Congressional Gold Medal The Congressional Gold Medal is an award bestowed by the United States Congress. It is Congress's highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions by individuals or institutions. The congressional pract ...
, forwarding the measure for concurrent action in the
U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
. *In March 2022, Congress passed the
Emmett Till Antilynching Act The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a landmark United States federal law which makes lynching a federal hate crime. The act amends the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and prior hate crime laws to define lynching a ...
.


Casket

During a renewed investigation of the crime in 2005, the Department of Justice exhumed Till's remains to conduct an autopsy and DNA analysis which confirmed the identification of his body. As required by state reburial law, Till was reinterred in a new casket later that year. In 2009, his original glass-topped casket was found, rusting in a dilapidated storage shed at the cemetery. The casket was discolored and the interior fabric torn. It bore evidence that animals had been living in it, although its glass top was still intact. The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. acquired the casket a month later.Trescott, Jacqueline (August 27, 2009)
"Emmett Till's Casket Donated to the Smithsonian"
''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''. Retrieved on October 6, 2010.


Representation in culture

Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hug ...
dedicated an untitled poem (eventually to be known as " Mississippi—1955") to Till in his October 1, 1955, column in ''The Chicago Defender''. It was reprinted across the country and continued to be republished with various changes from different writers. Author William Faulkner, a prominent white Mississippi native who often focused on racial issues, wrote two essays on Till: one before the trial in which he pleaded for American unity and one after, a piece titled "On Fear" that was published in '' Harper's'' in 1956. In it he questioned why the tenets of segregation were based on irrational reasoning. Till's murder was the focus of a 1957 television episode for the '' U.S. Steel Hour'' titled "Noon on Doomsday" written by
Rod Serling Rodman Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator/on-screen host, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series ' ...
. He was fascinated by how quickly Mississippi whites supported Bryant and Milam. Although the script was rewritten to avoid mention of Till, and did not say that the murder victim was black, White Citizens' Councils vowed to boycott
U.S. Steel United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in severa ...
. The eventual episode bore little resemblance to the Till case.
Gwendolyn Brooks Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetr ...
wrote a poem titled "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon" (1960). The same year
Harper Lee Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926February 19, 2016) was an American novelist best known for her 1960 novel ''To Kill a Mockingbird''. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Lee has received numero ...
published ''
To Kill a Mockingbird ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' has become ...
'', in which a white attorney is committed to defending a black man named Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman. Lee, whose novel had a profound effect on civil rights, never commented on why she wrote about Robinson. Literature professor Patrick Chura noted several similarities between Till's case and that of Robinson. Writer
James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
loosely based his 1964 drama ''
Blues for Mister Charlie ''Blues for Mister Charlie'' is James Baldwin's second play, a social commentary drama in three acts. It was first produced and published in 1964. The play is dedicated to the memory of Medgar Evers, his widow and children, and to the memory of th ...
'' on the Till case. He later divulged that Till's murder had been bothering him for several years.Metress, Christopher (Spring 2003). "No Justice, No Peace": The Figure of Emmett Till in African American Literature" ''MELUS'', 28 (1), pp. 87–103.
Anne Moody Anne Moody (September 15, 1940 – February 5, 2015) was an American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement through the NAACP, CORE and SNCC. Moody ...
mentioned the Till case in her autobiography, '' Coming of Age in Mississippi'', in which she states she first learned to hate during the fall of 1955.
Audre Lorde Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who ...
's poem "Afterimages" (1981) focuses on the perspective of a black woman thinking of Carolyn Bryant 24 years after the murder and trial.
Bebe Moore Campbell Bebe Moore Campbell (February 18, 1950 – November 27, 2006) was an American author, journalist and teacher. Campbell was the author of three ''New York Times'' bestsellers: ''Brothers and Sisters'', ''Singing in the Comeback Choir'', and ''What ...
's 1992 novel ''Your Blues Ain't Like Mine'' centers on the events of Till's death.
Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...
mentions Till's death in the novel '' Song of Solomon'' (1977) and later wrote the play '' Dreaming Emmett'' (1986), which follows Till's life and the aftermath of his death. The play is a feminist look at the roles of men and women in black society, which she was inspired to write while considering "time through the eyes of one person who could come back to life and seek vengeance".
Emmylou Harris Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter and musician. She has released dozens of albums and singles over the course of her career and has won 14 Grammys, the Polar Music Prize, and numerous other honors, including ...
includes a song called "My Name is Emmett Till" on her 2011 album, '' Hard Bargain''. According to scholar Christopher Metress, Till is often reconfigured in literature as a specter that haunts the white people of Mississippi, causing them to question their involvement in evil, or silence about injustice. The 2002 book ''Mississippi Trials, 1955'' is a fictionalized account of Till's death. The 2015 song by
Janelle Monáe Janelle Monáe Robinson (; born December 1, 1985) is an American singer, rapper and actress. She is signed to Atlantic Records, as well as to her own imprint, the Wondaland Arts Society. Monáe has received eight Grammy Award nominations. Mon ...
, "
Hell You Talmbout "Hell You Talmbout" is a 2015 protest song by Janelle Monáe and the members of her Wondaland artist collective, including Deep Cotton, George 2.0, Jidenna, Roman GianArthur, and St. Beauty. The word "talmbout" in the title is a contraction of ...
", invokes the names of African-American people—including Emmett Till—who died as a result of encounters with law enforcement or racial violence. In 2016 artist
Dana Schutz Dana Schutz (born 1976 in Livonia, Michigan) is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Schutz is known for her gestural, figurative paintings that often take on specific subjects or narrative situations as a point of depar ...
painted '' Open Casket'', a work based on photographs of Till in his coffin as well as on an account by Till's mother of seeing him after his death.


Documentaries

* ''The Murder and the Movement: The Story of the Murder of Emmett Till'' (1985) by Rich Samuel and produced by Anna Vasser (originally aired on
WMAQ-TV WMAQ-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Telemundo outlet WSNS-TV (chan ...
in Chicago) * '' The Murder of Emmett Till'' which aired during
Season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...
15 of the TV series ''
American Experience ''American Experience'' is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American his ...
'': website links to program transcript and additional materials for the PBS film * ''
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till ''The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till'' is a 2005 documentary film about the murder of Emmett Till. It was directed by Keith Beauchamp. The film contributed to the case being reopened by the U.S. Department of Justice. Background In August 195 ...
'' (2005) by Keith Beauchamp * ''
Eyes on the Prize ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement'' is an American television series and 14-part documentary about the 20th-century civil rights movement in the United States. The documentary originally aired on the PBS network, and it also ...
'': Transcript of 2006 PBS documentary


Books, plays, and other works inspired by Till

''This section includes creative works inspired by Till. For non-fiction books on Till, see Bibliography, below.''


Songs

* "The Death of Emmett Till", (1955) written by A. C. Bilbrew, recorded by The Ramparts with
Scatman Crothers Benjamin Sherman Crothers (May 23, 1910 – November 22, 1986), known professionally as Scatman Crothers, was an American actor and musician. He is known for playing Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show ''Chico and the Man'', and Dick Hallo ...
* "The Ballad of Emmett Till" (1956), recorded by Red River Dave (
David McEnery Red River Dave McEnery (born David Largus McEnery) (December 15, 1914 – January 15, 2002) was an American artist, musician, and writer of topical songs. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, United States. He got the nickname "Red River Dave" b ...
), in the TNT label's True Story Series * "My Name is Emmett Till", (2013) from '' Hard Bargain'', the twenty-sixth studio album by
Emmylou Harris Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter and musician. She has released dozens of albums and singles over the course of her career and has won 14 Grammys, the Polar Music Prize, and numerous other honors, including ...
. * "Too Many Martyrs" (1964) by
Phil Ochs Philip David Ochs (; December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was an American songwriter and protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer). Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, political activism, often alliterative lyrics, and ...
, mentions and eulogizes Till *"
The Death of Emmett Till "The Death of Emmett Till", also known as "The Ballad of Emmett Till", is a song by American musician and Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan about the murder of Emmett Till. Till, a 14-year-old African American, was killed on August 28, 1955, by two white m ...
" (1962), also known as "The Ballad of Emmett Till", by
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
* "Emmett's Ghost" written and recorded by American blues singer
Eric Bibb Eric Charles Bibb (born August 16, 1951) is a Grammy-nominated American-born blues singer and songwriter. Biography Bibb's father, Leon, was a musical theatre singer, who made a name for himself as part of the 1960s New York folk scene; his u ...
.


Other

* Poem: "Emmett Till" (1991) by
James Emanuel James Emanuel (born June 15, 1921 – September 28, 2013) was a poet and scholar from Alliance, Nebraska. Emanuel, who is ranked by some critics as one of the best
* ''Wolf Whistle'' (1993) by
Lewis Nordan Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer. Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi and grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississ ...
* Juvenile fiction: ''Mississippi Trial, 1955'' (2003) by Chris Crowe * Drama: ''
The State of Mississippi and the Face of Emmett Till ''The State of Mississippi and the Face of Emmett Till'' is a 2003 play written by David Barr and Mamie Till Mobley. The show chronicles the life and brutal death of Emmett Till, and the circumstances that surrounded his murder. Performances Pega ...
'' (2005) by David Barr * Poem: "A Wreath for Emmett Till" (2005) by
Marilyn Nelson Marilyn Nelson (born April 26, 1946) is an American poet, translator, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former poet laureate of Connecticut, She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetr ...
* ''The Sacred Place'' (2007) by Daniel Black * Musical: ''The Ballad of Emmett Till'' (2008) by Ifa Bayeza * Drama: '' Anne and Emmett'' (2009) by
Janet Langhart Janet Leola Langhart Cohen (née Floyd; born December 22, 1941) is an American television journalist and anchor, and author. Beginning her career as a model, she started in television reporting the weather. She serves as president and CEO of La ...
. An imaginary conversation between Till and
Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...
, both killed as young teenagers because of racial persecution, the play features recorded narration by
Morgan Freeman Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, director, and narrator. He is known for his distinctive deep voice and various roles in a wide variety of film genres. Throughout his career spanning over five decades, he has received ...
. * ''Gathering of Waters'' (2012) by Bernice L. McFadden * Painting: '' Emmett Till: How She Sent Him and How She Got Him Back'' (2012) by Lisa Whittington, on display at the
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is a museum in Jackson, Mississippi. Its mission is to document, exhibit the history of, and educate the public about the American Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. state of Mississippi between 1945 and 1970.
* Film:
Ava DuVernay Ava Marie DuVernay (; born August 24, 1972) is an American filmmaker, television producer and former film publicist. She is a recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, a NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as a nominee ...
was commissioned by the Smithsonian's
National Museum of African American History and Culture The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in December 2003 and opened its permanent home in ...
to create a film which debuted at the museum's opening on September 24, 2016. This film, ''August 28: A Day in the Life of a People'' (2016), tells of six significant events in
African-American history African-American history began with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The ...
that happened on the same date, August 28. Events depicted include (among others) Till's lynching. * Film: ''
My Nephew Emmett ''My Nephew Emmett'' is an American live-action short film directed by Kevin Wilson Jr. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018. Wilson won the Student Academy Awards, Student Academy ...
'' dramatizes Till's uncle Mose Wright waiting for Till's killers. The film was nominated for the Oscar for best live action short, 2018. * Television series:
HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
's science-fiction horror series ''
Lovecraft Country Lovecraft Country is a term coined for the New England setting used by H. P. Lovecraft in many of his weird fiction stories, which combines real and fictitious locations. This setting has since been elaborated on by other writers working in the ...
'' features a version of Till, portrayed by Rhyan Hill, as a recurring character who appears in 2 episodes. The episode "Jig-A-Bobo" recreates Till's funeral in Chicago. * Television series: ''
Women of the Movement ''Women of the Movement'' is an American historical drama miniseries that premiered on ABC on January 6, 2022. Created by Marissa Jo Cerar, the series centers on Mamie Till-Mobley, played by Adrienne Warren, who devoted her life to seeking jus ...
'' (2022). * Film: ''
Till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...
'' (2022) film based on the life of Emmett's mother Mamie Till-Bradley, as educator and activist after his murder.


Gallery

File:Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center.jpg, Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center housed in the old cotton gin of
Glendora, Mississippi Glendora is a village in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The population was 285 at the 2000 census. History Glendora was developed by White Americans as a small sawmill site. Logs were floated down the river from around the vicinity of Webb to ...
. File:Glendora Gin sign.jpg, Glendora Gin history sign. Here Milam and Bryant got the fan they used to weigh down Till's body, to sink it in the Tallahatchie River. File:Sign identifying site of J.W. Milam's house.jpg, Sign identifying the site of Milam's house, near Glendora Gin. File:Site of killing of Clinton Melton.jpg, Clinton Melton was the victim of a racially motivated killing a few months after Till. Despite eyewitness testimony, his killer, a friend of Milam's, was acquitted by an all-white jury at the same courthouse. File:Ben Roy Service Station.jpg, The reconstructed Ben Roy Service Station that stood next to the grocery store where Till encountered Bryant in
Money, Mississippi Money is an unincorporated community near Greenwood in Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, in the Mississippi Delta. It has fewer than 100 residents, down from 400 in the early 1950s when a cotton mill operated there. Money is located o ...
, 2019 File:Bryant's Grocery 2018.jpg, Bryant's Grocery (2018). By 2018, the store was described as "not much left" and given owner's demands, no preservation occurred.


See also

* 1920 Duluth lynchings *
Louis Allen Louis Allen (April 25, 1919 – January 31, 1964) was an African-American businessman in Liberty, Mississippi, who was shot and killed on his land during the civil rights era. He had previously tried to register to vote and had allegedly talked ...
* Scottsboro Boys *
George Stinney George Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944), was an African American boy, who at the age of 14 was convicted, in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial, and executed, for the murders of two young white girls in March 1944 ...
*
Ossian Sweet Ossian Sweet ( /ˈɒʃən/ ''OSH-ən''; October 30, 1895 – March 20, 1960) was an African-American physician in Detroit, Michigan. He is known for being charged with murder in 1925 after he and his friends used armed self-defense against a h ...
*
Isaac Woodard Isaac Woodard Jr. (March 18, 1919 – September 23, 1992) was an American soldier and victim of racial violence. An African-American World War II veteran, on February 12, 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army, ...


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * *
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(February 9, 2006)
Prosecutive Report of Investigation Concerning (Emmett Till)Part 1

Part 2
(PDF). Retrieved October 2011. * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* * * * * * *
The original 1955 ''Jet'' magazine with Emmett Till's murder story
pp. 6–9, an
Emmett Till's Legacy 50 Years Later
in ''Jet'', 2005.
NPR pieces on the Emmett Till murder
* Devery S. Anderson
"A Wallet, a White Woman, and a Whistle: Fact and Fiction in Emmett Till's Encounter in Money, Mississippi"
(PDF) ''The Southern Quarterly'' (July 2008)
''Booknotes'' interview with Christopher Benson on ''Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America'', April 25, 2004.

Testimony of Carolyn Bryant at trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam


External links


Emmett Till Archives
Florida State University

Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
Video interview with Mamie Till-Mobley
Emmett Till's mother
"Emmett Till Murder"
Civil Rights Digital Library.
Treading the Tightrope of Jim Crow: Emmett Till.
''The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks''.
2006 FBI investigation and transcript of 1955 trial (464 pages)Emmett Till Interpretative CenterEmmett Till Historic Intrepid CenterMamie Till Mobley Memorial FoundationEmmett Till Memory Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Till, Emmett 1941 births 1955 deaths 1955 murders in the United States African-American history of Mississippi Burials in Illinois Deaths by beating in the United States Deaths by firearm in Mississippi History of African-American civil rights Incidents of violence against boys Lynching deaths in Mississippi Male murder victims Murdered African-American people Murdered American children People from Summit, Illinois People murdered in Mississippi Racially motivated violence against African Americans Tallahatchie County, Mississippi Burials at Burr Oak Cemetery