Money is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

near Greenwood in Leflore County,

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 ...

, United States, in the Mississippi Delta. It has fewer than 100 residents, down from 400 in the early 1950s when a

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were driven b ...

operated there. Money is located on a railroad line along 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 ...

, a tributary of the Yazoo River in the eastern part of the Mississippi Delta. The community has ZIP code 38945 in the Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area. Money is the site of events leading to the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till by white men, an event that gained nationwide attention. The suspects were acquitted by 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 ...

in 1955. They sold their story to '' Look'' magazine the next year and admitted their crime in the 1956 interview.

History

This rural area was developed for cotton cultivation. The Money post office was established in 1901. The community was named for Hernando Money, a United States Senator from Mississippi.

Murder of Emmett Till

Money became infamous for the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, who was visiting his uncle Moses Wright in August 1955. Till was accused of flirting with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working alone at Bryant's Grocery which she owned with her husband Roy Bryant. In 2007 Bryant said that she had fabricated details of the encounter in her testimony at trial. After the store encounter, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, abducted, tortured, and murdered Till because Carolyn Bryant said that Till had flirted with her, crossing the "color line". The pair were arrested and tried for the murder, but were acquitted by an

. Several months later, they sold their story, and confessed to the killing in an interview with William Bradford Huie that was published in the January 1956 issue of '' Look'' magazine. Till's mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on an open casket funeral for her son in Chicago. She wanted people to see that her son had been badly beaten before his death. She allowed news photographs of his body to be published. National awareness was heightened of lynching in the South and the oppression and violence against blacks under Jim Crow. Historians suggest that the Emmett Till murder helped galvanize the civil rights movement by drawing national attention to injustices in the South.

Legacy

A historical marker is at the site of the former Bryant's Grocery Store, as part of the Mississippi Freedom Trail. It notes the influence of Till's murder and the injustice of his killers going free as catalysts for the civil rights movement both nationally and statewide.

In popular culture

A wooden bridge across the

at Money was the focus of

Bobbie Gentry Bobbie Gentry (born Roberta Lee Streeter; July 27, 1942) is a retired American singer-songwriter, who was one of the first female artists in America to compose and produce her own material. Gentry rose to international fame in 1967 with her Sou ...

's 1967 hit song "

Ode to Billie Joe "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title-track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped '' Billboard's'' Pop sin ...

." The November 10, 1967 issue of ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...

'' magazine featured a photo of Gentry crossing the bridge. The bridge collapsed in June 1972 after being burned by vandals. It has since been replaced.

Education

It is in the Greenwood-Leflore School District. Residents are zoned to Amanda Elzy High School. The town was formerly served by the Leflore County School District. Effective July 1, 2019 this district consolidated into the Greenwood-Leflore School District.

Notable people

* Richard "Hacksaw" Harney – Delta blues guitarist and pianist * James Schaffer – religious leader and centenarian. * Willye White – Olympic athlete.

Gallery

File:MoneyMSPostOffice.JPG, Former Money post office File:Bryant's Grocery.jpg, Mississippi Freedom Trail Marker

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Mississippi Unincorporated communities in Leflore County, Mississippi Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area