Till, Emmett Louis – Murder Shocked America

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(Last Updated On: June 9, 2021)

Emmett Till
By
John C Abercrombie

The brutal murder and mutilation of the body of a 14-year-old Black boy at the hands of White adults and the subsequent acquittal drew national attention. The brutality and treatment of the body called attention to a problem of long standing in the United States. The murder of Emmitt Till sparked a new chapter in the history of civil rights.

The murder of Till was not the first, nor the most horrific, but because it was “seen” in pictures and on media, it struck the conscious of America with great impact.
Emmett Louis Till was born July 25, 1941, the only child of Mamie Carthan and Louis Till. His mother who played a large part in the life and subsequent examination of the crime was born in Webb, Mississippi.

The Mississippi Delta is a distinctive section of the state of Mississippi and some portions of Arkansas and Louisiana between the Mississippi and Yazoo River and is well known because of its unique racial and cultural history. Many families moved from the South to escape violence, intimidation and lack of meaningful jobs and an extremely unfair system of laws. Argo, Illinois was sometimes referred to as “Little Mississippi” because of the large number of Blacks who moved there to avoid the horrors of the South.

Blacks were essentially disenfranchised in 1890 when the White legislature passed a new constitution that raised barriers to voting. They also passed ordinances that enforced racial segregation and Jim Crow laws. Voting laws prevented Black participation in government and allowed for the passage of laws that disenfranchised them.

Blacks are a greatful people and Emmett’s grandmother’s home was often used as a way station while people moving North in search of equal opportunity were trying to find jobs and homes.
When Emmett was 5 or 6, he contracted polio. Polio has been virtually eliminated today due to vaccinations, but in those days, it was devastating. There was muscle weakness resulting in many not being able to move. It affected most often the legs, but could also involve muscles of the head, neck. and diaphragm. The only lingering effects that Emmitt suffered was a case of stuttering.

Mamie Till Bradley (Emmett’s mother) and Emmett lived in a South Side Chicago neighborhood. She worked as a civilian clerk for the United States Air Force. She recalled Emmett as industrious and more than willing to do chores at home. Emmett was known for pulling pranks and was a friendly kid.

In 1955, Mose Wright, Emmitt’s uncle visited them and told stories about living in the Mississippi Delta. Emmitt wanted to see for himself. His mother, Mamie was planning a trip to Nebraska to visit relatives, but after Emmitt begged, she relented and allowed him to go to Mississippi.

Emmett was described by some as fat, a young man at 150 pounds but stood only 5’4” and was a fun-loving kid. He and his cousin accompanied Uncle Mose Wright back to Money, Mississippi a small town in the Delta. Uncle Mose was a sharecropper and part-time minister and was called “Preacher” by the people who knew him.

Before leaving for Mississippi, his mother Mamie gave him “The Talk”. Today, Blacks have to give the talk to their children, especially young men who may encounter police who seem to view Blacks with great alarm. The end result was the same, to save innocent lives. His mother warned him that Chicago and Mississippi were two completely different worlds and he had to know how to behave in front of Southern Whites.

More than 500 Blacks have been killed by extrajudicial violence (Lynchings) in Mississippi alone since statistics started to be collected in 1882. There have been over 4,000 confirmed Lynchings in America and an untold number of undocumented cases. There is even a museum to Lynchings. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

Despite the horror of Lynching which includes bypassing the justice system in its entirety and the loss of human lives, the United States has avoided making it a federal crime. It therefore gets swept under the rug, covered up avoiding publicity.

Although very tense, racial tensions increased even more after the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education that ended segregation in public education. White segregationists believed it would lead to interracial dating and marriage. Many jurisdictions ignored the rulings while others took stronger measures to keep Blacks disenfranchised. Segregation has been used to constrain Blacks from any semblance of social equality.

Many confederate memorials and statures were erected after the ruling of Brown v Bord of Education.

The high racial tensions can be seen in the murder of Lamar Smith, killed in front of the Brookhaven County Courthouse for political organizing.

In a country that claims to have a fair and just judicial system, we see once again the unfairness of the system as the 3 White subjects were arrested but very soon released and nothing further was heard of the case. This was the week before Emmitt Till arrived in Mississippi.

August 24, Till joined some local boys and they went to the Store owned by Carolyn and Roy Brant to buy candy. Carolyn Brant was in the store and her sister-in-law was watching kids in the back. Other kids were across the street playing checkers.

There are several versions of exactly what happened in the store, however there is some consistency to the fact that Emmitt whistled at Bryant. Some thought he was trying to be funny. There are some who claimed that Emmitt had a picture of a White girl that came in his wallet that he claimed was his girlfriend in Chicago, however that state was recanted in a deathbed confession by his cousin Curtis Jones who also apologized to Till’s mother.

Many of the videos and books at the end of the article paint a picture of deep reflection from Simeon Wright and Wheeler Parker. These videos are particularly enlightening as they harbor no ill will but seek only the truth of the incident. Very revealing.

Till’s cousin Simeon Wright said that Till whistled at Bryant, wanting to get a laugh out of the boys. He was always joking around. Simeon said “Well, it scared us half to death, we were almost in shock. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough … he continued the KKK and night riders were part of our daily lives.”

There are some accounts that say Till used a whistle to help himself when he had a problem with stuttering as a result of his polio at an earlier age. At any rate, we have a 14-year-old boy who may have whistled at a White woman. Is this truly a crime punishable by death?

The boys did not want to tell Mose Wright because they were scared, they would get in trouble. Meanwhile Roy Bryant was on a trip hauling shrimp to Texas and did not get back to Money until August 27th. Carolyn did not tell her husband Roy about the incident, but he learned from someone that hung around the store. Carolyn later told the FBI that she didn’t tell Roy because she was scared, he would beat Till.

Bryant went ballistic over the news and that evening he and a Black man, JW Washington approached a Black teen, seized him, and took him back for Carolyn to identify. He learned that the guy he was looking for was a kid from Chicago and staying with Mose Wright. To keep things in perspective it is necessary to understand the power of intimidation and violence in controlling Blacks in the area. There was no relief available as the law enforcement readily went along with the Whites.

Several witnesses overheard Bryant and his half brother JW Milam talking about taking Till from Wright’s house. Keep in mind that evidence does no good when the system is stacked against you.

About 2:30 am on August 28th, 1955 Bryant and Milam armed with a pistol and flashlight abducted Till. They threatened Wright that they would kill him if he reported it. They did not take him for Carolyn to identify because Till admitted that he had been to the store that day. However, there are witnesses that have testified that Carolyn Bryant was in the car and identified Till.

They tied Till up in the back of a pickup truck and may have enlisted the aid of 2 Black men. Till may have been pistol-whipped until he was unconscious. Keep in mind the threat of violence or even death to anyone who would defy the KKK.

Willie Reed states that he heard someone getting beat and crying from the barn, he told a neighbor and the 2 of them walked back up the road. Milam asked if they heard anything and they responded “No”. They also say they saw one of Till’s boots. Milam told them he had killed a deer and that the boot was his. It is speculated that Till’s clothes were burned at Roy Bryant’s house.

Despite the evidence against Bryant and Milam, they were tried by an All-White, All-Male jury, since Blacks and women were excluded from juries in those days and found innocent. The jury obviously had their minds made up or faced peer pressure to come up with the verdict as they deliberated only67 minutes before finding them innocent of all charges. During the short deliberations, they took time to enjoy a soft drink and delayed the verdict to make it look “good”.

Since being found not guilty by the all-White, all-Male jury, they were protected from being tried again by double jeopardy. “Non bis in idem” or “ne bis in idem” is a procedural measure that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same or similar charges following a valid acquittal or conviction in the same jurisdiction.

Being aware of this Bryant and Milam then admitted to the murder and sold their story to a national magazine, “Look” for $4,000.00. They said they intended to beat Till and throw him off an embankment into the river to “frighten” him. However, they claimed that he called them bastards and said he was as good as they and had sexual encounters with White women. They also admitted putting Till on the back of the truck and tied him to a 70-pound fan and throwing his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Till’s grotesque, swollen and disfigured body was found in the Tallahatchie River by 2 boys fishing 3 days after the abduction and murder.

There was no post-mortem or autopsy to confirm the manner and time of death. Therefore, any tools or other evidence was not considered that may have helped the prosecution. Like it was a set up. Till’s mother had to demand the return of the body as an immediate burial was intended by officials in Mississippi.

It is also suspected that because of the odor of rotting flesh that there had been no embalming of the body. It was packed in lime and placed in a pine coffin.

While many publications expressed outrage over the execution of Till, Newsweek stated the Black community was aroused as it has not been over any similar act in recent history. Time published a photograph of Till’s mother over the grossly mutilated body and identified it as one of the 100 “most influential images of all time”: for almost a century Blacks 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.” You can not unsee a picture and this was a vivid example of it.

Bryant and Milam were indicted for murder, but the prosecuting attorney was not confident of securing a conviction of a Black man accused of insulting a White woman. The state was concerned about the possibility of getting a guilty verdict despite the compelling evidence. At first Bryant and Milam did not have an attorney, but 5 stepped forward to defend them pro bono (free). Supporters of Bryant and Milam put collection jars in public places around the area and gathered $10,000.00 for the defense. This is an example of the depth of the racial attitude of America.
A day before the trial a witness with knowledge of 2 witnesses to the crime to the crime. The Sheriff booked both witnesses in jail so they would not be able to testify.

Some of the reported details of the trial seem ridiculous by todays standards. The sheriff welcomed Black spectators coming back from lunch with a cheerful, “Hello, racial slur”. Black spectators were required to sit in a segregated section of the courtroom. Jury members were allowed to drink beer while serving, and many White spectators wore handguns.

There were several observations of Mose Wright’s testimony identifying Bryant and Milam. “the most dramatic thing I saw during my career”. It is reported that he is the only Black to testify against a White man and live to tell about it.

Although the 2 witnesses were being held so they could not testify, there were 3 other witnesses who saw them on Milam’s property. 2 of the 3 testified that they heard someone being beaten on Milam’s property.

The jury was highly weighted with people from the hill country section of Tallahatchie County. A county with poor economic make up with Blacks and Whites in intense competition for land and other opportunities. These people had virulent racial tendencies. The prosecution was criticized for dismissing potential jurors who knew either Bryant or Milam, fearing that they may vote to acquit, however this was termed a gross mistake because general consensus was that anyone who knew Bryant or Milam generally disliked them.

One juror voted twice to convict but acquiesced on the 3rd vote. In interviews the jurors acknowledged knowing Bryant and Milam were guilty but didn’t believe life imprisonment or the death penalty were fit punishment for killing a Black man.

This is very important as we see the all-White, all-male jury making a determination that because the victim was Black, White men should not suffer the same penalty that a Black man would suffer if the victim had been White. This is just an early example of why we have a Black Lives Matter movement today.

The Till case caused civil rights groups to push for the federal government to investigate such cases. This resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

After Bryant and Milam sold their story to Look magazine, many of the underlying reports of others being involved basically went away without adequate investigation.

Following their bold admission to murder in the press, their fortunes began to decline. Friends and supporters became distant. Blacks boycotted their store and they ended in bankruptcy. They had difficulty getting a loan to plant crops, but unlike the Blacks in the area, Milam managed to purchase 217 acres to plant cotton, but Blacks refused to work on his land and he had to pay Whites higher wages to do the work that during slavery was free and during the post war period was done cheaply by Blacks. During his life after the Till murder, Milam has been charged with assault and battery, writing bad checks, and using a stolen credit card. Milam eventually died of spinal cancer at the age of 61.

Bryant eventually found work as a welder, however, loss of eyesight rendered him unable to continue. He and Carolyn divorced, and he remarried in 1980. In 1984 and 1988 he was convicted of food stamp fraud. Although he had publicly admitted to the murder he stated “if Emmett Till hadn’t got out of line, it probably wouldn’t have happened. Bryant lived a private life and refused to be photographed or to reveal his location. He explained it “this new generation is different, and I don’t want to worry about a bullet some dark night”. Like they did to Emmett. Bryant died of cancer in 1994 at the age of 63.

A 2008 interview with Carolyn Bryant by Timothy Tyson, she admitted that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her testimony. The judge did not allow Carolyn brant to testify, ruling it inadmissible.

The body was exhumed in 2005 and a full autopsy along with DNA and dental records confirmed the body as that of Emmett Louis Till. In addition to the horrific cranial injuries, it shows that he also suffered a broken left femur and 2 broken wrists.

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2004: The Murder of Emmett Till

In 2004, 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley reported on the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

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The Blood of Emmett Till

Longlisted for the National Book Award * Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award * A New York Times Notable Book * A Washington Post Notable Book * An NPR Best Book of 2017 * A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2017 * An Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Southern Book of 2017

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The Body Of Emmett Till | 100 Photos | TIME 

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Emmett Till was brutally killed in the summer of 1955. At his funeral, his mother forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism.

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Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement (Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series)

Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement offers the first, and as of 2018, only comprehensive account of the 1955 murder, the trial, and the 2004-2007 FBI investigation into the case and Mississippi grand jury decision. By all accounts, it is the definitive account of the case. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta.

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The Untold Story of EMMETT LUIS TILL (Documentary 2005) by Keith Beauchamp

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A Wreath for Emmett Till

In 1955 people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral held by his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention. In a profound and chilling poem, award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement.

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New revelations in 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till

Author Timothy Tyson discusses his new book “The Blood Of Emmett Till” with “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King. The book recounts the brutal 1955 murder of black teen Emmett Till in Mississippi. Till was accused of assaulting a white woman, which led to his kidnapping and death.

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Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America

The mother of Emmett Till recounts the story of her life, her son’s tragic death, and the dawn of the civil rights movement—with a foreword by the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old African American, Emmett Till, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped from his bed in the middle of the night by two white men and brutally murdered. His crime: allegedly whistling at a white woman in a convenience store. The killers were eventually acquitted.

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Take a drive through the Mississippi Delta today and you’ll find a landscape dotted with memorials to major figures and events from the civil rights movement. Perhaps the most chilling are those devoted to the murder of Emmett Till, a tragedy of hate and injustice that became a beacon in the fight for racial equality. The ways this event is remembered have been fraught from the beginning, revealing currents of controversy, patronage, and racism lurking just behind the placid facades of historical markers.

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The murder of Emmett Till caused quite a stir, not only because of the brutality, but the disregard for the value of a Black life. 

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