Emmett Till was an African American boy who was brutally murdered for racial reasons in the town of Money, Mississippi. His death is remembered as one of the key events that strengthened the nascent US civil rights movement.
The main suspects were acquitted but later admitted that they had committed the crime. Till’s mother demanded a public funeral ceremony for the son, with the coffin open, so that everyone could see how the boy had been tortured and murdered: he had been beaten, his eye was pulled out, he was shot, and ‘they had finally thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a neck of a cotton gin (an instrument used for the processing of cotton) tied to the neck as ballast with barbed wire.
The corpse remained in the river for three days before being discovered and recovered by two fishermen. Till is buried in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. The investigation into his murder was officially reopened in May 2004, and as part of the investigation, the body was exhumed to perform an autopsy. The body was then buried again by the family.
Emmett Till Facts
- Born: July 25, 1941, in Argo, Illinois
- Age: 19 Years Old
- Known for: 14-year-old victim of a lynching, whose galvanized death of the civil rights movement
- Real Name: Emmett Louis Till
- Education: James McCosh Elementary School
- Parents: Mamie Till-Mobley and Louis Till
- Died: August 21, 1955, in Money, Mississippi
- Quotes “I thought about Emmett Till and I couldn’t go back My legs and feet didn’t hurt that a cliché I paid the same rate as others and I felt hurt I wasn’t going … back. ” -Pink park
Emmett Till Biography
Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Argo, Illinois., A city outside of Chicago. He was born into a poor Christian family. Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till left his father, Louis Till when he was a baby. In 1945, until Mamie received word that Emmett’s father was killed in Italy.
They didn’t learn the exact circumstances until after Emmett’s death, when Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland, to reduce sympathy for Emmet’s mother, showed the press that he had been executed for rape.
In her book “Death of Innocence: The History of Hate Crimes That Changes America” Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, tells of her son’s childhood. He spent his early years surrounded by a large family. When he was 6 years old he developed polio. Although he is recovering, she left him with a stutter that he struggled to overcome during his youth.
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Emmett Till Childhood
Mamie and Emmett spent some time in Detroit but moved to Chicago when Emmett was about 10. She had remarried at this point but left her husband when she learned of his infidelity.
Mamie Till describes Emmett as adventurous and independent, even when he is a small child. An incident when Emmett was 11 also shows his courage. Marnie’s husband still came from her house and threatened her. Emmett stood by him, a butcher knife grabbed his mother to defend if necessary.
Youth
Through his mother’s account, Emmett was a responsible young man as a youth and teenager. He often took around the house while his mother was at work. Mamie Till called her son “meticulous”. He was proud of his looks and figured out a way to steam his clothes on the cooler.
But he also had time for fun. He loved music and enjoyed dancing. He had a strong group of friends back in Argo that he would take the tram to see on weekends.
And like all children, he dreamed of his future. Emmett once told his mother that when he grew up he wanted to be a motorcycle policeman. He told another relative he wanted to be a baseball player.
Trip to Mississippi
Until the mother’s family was from Mississippi and she still had family there, and an uncle, Moses Wright. When he was 14, he went on a trip to see his relatives there during his summer vacation.
Until, cities in or around Chicago and Detroit had spent his entire life with it, which were separate but not by law. Northern cities like Chicago were separated because of the social and economic consequences of discrimination. As such, they do not have to relate to the same kind of refused to go to Mississippi and insisted that her son’s body related to races found in the south.
Emmett’s mother warned him that the south was a different environment. She warned him “be careful” and “humiliate yourself” the whites in Mississippi if necessary. Accompanied by his 16-year-old cousin Wheeler Parker Jr., Bis in Geld, Mississippi, came on August 21, 1955.
Before Emmet Till Brutal Murder
On Wednesday, August 24, Till and seven or eight cousins went from Bryant Grocery and Fishmarket, a white proprietary store that sells mostly merchandise to African-American sharecroppers in the area. Carolyn Bryant, a 21-year-old white woman, works at the cash register while her husband, a trucker, was on the street.
Emmett and his cousins were chatting in the parking lot and Emmett, in a youthful boast, boasted to his cousins that he had a white girlfriend back in Chicago. What happened next is unclear. His cousins disagree if anyone dares Emmett to go to the store and get a date with Carolyn.
Emmett did, however, go to the store and bought chewing gum. To what extent he tries to flirt with Carolyn is also unclear. Carolyn changed her story several times at different times, suggesting that he said, “Bye, baby,
His cousins reported that he whistled at Carolyn’s and apparently left her when she went to her car to get a gun. His mother suggests that he whistled in an attempt to overcome his stuttering; sometimes he would whistle if he was stuck on a word.
Whatever the context, Carolyn chose to keep the meeting from her husband, Roy Bryant. He learned of the incident from the local gossip of a young African-American teenager apparently being so fat with a white woman was outrageous.
Emmett Till Injuries
At around 2:00 p.m. on August 28, Roy Bryant and his half brother John W. Milam went to Wright’s home and pulled Bis out of bed. They kidnapped him and local farmhand Willie Reed saw him in a truck with around six men (four whites and two African Americans) at about 6:00 am Willie was on his way to the store, but when he left he heard Tills screaming.
Three days later, a boy fishing in the Tallahatchie River 15 miles upstream from Money found Emmett’s body. Emmett had become a fan of a cotton gin that weighed 75 pounds. He was tortured before they were shot. Bis was so unrecognizable that his great-uncle Moses was only able to identify his body from the ring he was wearing (a ring that his father had heard).
The Funeral of Emmett Till
After the disfigured corpse of Emmett Till was discovered, he was placed in a cash wood of pine and was about to be buried, but Mamie Till refused to go to Mississippi and insisted that her son’s body returned to Chicago for the funeral.
The funeral home, given the conditions of the body, did not intend to open the case, but Mamie Till resolutely fought this decision: since the State of Mississippi did not allow the company to open it, Mamie threatened to do it alone, supporting that he had the right to see his son for the last time.
And after seeing the body, he demanded that the funeral ceremony take place with the coffin open, and allowed everyone to take pictures so that everyone could see how Till’s body had been reduced. Photographs of Till’s mutilated corpse were widespread in the United States, and appeared in Jet magazine, provoking an intense popular reaction.
According to some estimates, around 50,000 people saw the body. Emmett Till was buried on September 6 in the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. That same day, Bryant and Milam were charged with the grand jury.
The Trial
The trial of the accused began on September 19, 1955, 22 days after the murder. Emmett’s uncle Moses Wright was one of the main witnesses summoned to testify. Taken by prosecutor Gerald Chatham, he pointed to one of the suspected killers and identified the man who had killed his nephew.
On September 23, in a 67-minute session, the jury acquitted the accused. The acquittal left everyone indignant, causing the Civil Rights Movement to increase significantly.
After the Trial
In a 1956 article in Look magazine paid JW Milam and Roy Bryant $4,000 to tell the true story. Knowing that they could not be tried again, the brothers confirmed the crime and said they had no choice in the face of the situation they reached, imprisoning and beating Emmett Till.
On May 10, 2004, the United States through the Department of Justice announced the reopening of the case to determine whether anyone other than Milam and Bryant was involved. Since no autopsy was performed on Till, his body was exhumed on May 31, 2005, in the suburb of Chicago, in the cemetery where he was buried.
The body was buried again by relatives on June 4 and has been positively identified as Emmett Till himself.
Confession Carolyn Bryant Emmett Till
In 2017, in his book “The Blood of Emmett Till,” the historian Timothy Tyson, brings new information which leads to the reopening of the investigation by the federal authorities. Indeed, Carolyn Bryant confesses to the author that he lied during the initial testimony.
This revelation was published in January 2017. As reported by the American media on July 12, 2018, and in particular the Washington Post.
This white woman had accused the young boy of having grabbed her by the waist and of having made explicit advances to her while she was at the same time as him in a Money grocery store. She then repeated her accusations before a jury.
In the book, more than six decades after the fact, she explains that Emmett Till did not make advances to her, contradicting her initial testimony. “This part is not true,” she said of the gesture and the words she had long described.
“Nothing that this boy did can ever justify what happened to him,” she added. After the book came out, the question of the guilt of Carolyn Donham, now in her 80s, arose.