EMMETT TILL July 25, 1941-August 28, 1955

1. EMMETT TILLJuly 25, 1941-August 28, 1955

2. Emmett Till, 14 years old, only child of Mamie Till Bradley was murdered while visiting his great uncle in Money, MS.

3. Moses Wright

4. Moses Wright’s house

5. Emmett bragged to other black teenagers that he dated white women • He was dared to ask Carolyn Bryant, wife of white store owner, Roy Bryant, for a date • He allegedly flirted with and/or whistled at Carolyn Bryant

6. Word of Emmett’s actions at Bryant’s Grocery spread quickly through town • Soon Roy Bryant was told of the incident • Bryant and his half brother, J. W. Milan, decided to teach Emmett a lesson

7. Bryant and Milam drove to the home of Emmett’s uncle, and demanded that he be turned over to them • The men drove Emmett to an old barn and pistol whipped him • Emmett was taken to the river, shot and thrown in the river weighted down by an industrial fan

8. When Till could not be found, Bryant and Milam admitted taking him but said they turned him loose that night. • Some thought Till was being hidden for fear of his safety. • Medgar Evers came to search for information to help find him. • Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River three days after his abduction. • Rumor came from the sheriff’s department that it was not Emmett Till’s body. He was safe in Chicago. • The brothers were arrested on August 28.

9. When Emmett's body was sent home to Chicago for burial, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, met the train at the Illinois Central Railroad Station and demanded the casket be opened.  • She confirmed the identification made in Mississippi of the murdered child,  mainly by recognizing an initial ring on the finger of the mutilated body. 

11. Around 250,000 persons viewed Emmett at the church. All were shocked, some horrified and appalled. Many prayed, scores fainted and practically all, men, women and children wept. The grotesque appearance of the body, made worse by the waters of the Tallahatchie River, was difficult to look at and those who did would never forget the sight. As thousands passed the bier at Roberts Temple church, another newspaper wrote, men gritted their teeth and turned tear-filled faces away from the ghastly sight, while women screamed as they viewed the torn and twisted features of the harmless boy.

12. Mamie Bradley, mother

13. Sumner Money Over 400 people in 1950’s Under 100 today

14. The trial of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant began on September 19, 1955 at the Tallahatchie County  courthouse in the city of Sumner.

15. Jurors • There were no black jurors. In a county where nearly 65 per cent of the 32,000 residents were black Americans, there was not a single registered black voter. That was because if a black man tried to register to vote, he could be killed for his efforts.

16. The defense attorneys who defended them pro bono.

17. Roy Bryant J. W. Milam J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant entered the courtroom for opening testimony in happy moods. With their wives by their sides the entire time, the defendants showed confidence. The jury consisted of friends and neighbors, who of course, shared the defendants views, attitudes and beliefs about racial matters

18. They were able to find witnesses. • Willie Reed, 18-years-old, testified that he saw Bryant, Milam • and another man come out of the barn after he • heard screaming. • Wright was then called to the stand. • Bryant and Milam came banging on his door the night of • August 28 demanding Emmett. • Milam walked in with a gun, made Emmett get out of bed • and put his clothes on. • The prosecutor, Chatam, asked Wright to point out the man • with the gun. • He said, Yes, Sir, stands up, points his finger at them and • and said, “Thar he!

19. Mrs. Roy Bryant took the stand. Prosecutors wanted her entire testimony excluded because they were aware that a Mississippi jury could well find cause for murder if a Southern woman was accosted by a black male. As a precaution, Judge Swango ordered the jury removed during testimony and reserved decision on the matter. Carolyn said that she was alone in the store on August 24 when she saw a group of blacks out front on the porch. He said How about a date baby? He caught me at the cash register and put both hands on my waist, she said. He said What’s the matter baby, cant you take it? You needn’t be afraid of me! I’ve been with white women before. Carolyn testified that she tried to get away but the boy blocked her and prevented her from moving. This other Negro came in and caught his arm and took him out, she told the court. As the boys friend pulled Till out of the store, Carolyn said she ran outside to get a handgun that she knew was in her husbands car. As she did, she said she saw the boy out front. He whistled, she said. She described it as the wolf whistle. When she approached the front of the store, gun in hand, she saw the boy driving away in the car with his friends. She knew all of the blacks in Money and so she was able to tell the court that the boy was not from around town. I was just scared to death, she said.

20. The defense said the body recovered from the river was not Till's body. Instead, they said that Milam and Bryant had taken Till but had let him go. They blamed hat the NAACP and Mamie Till. They claimed they had dug up a body and said that it was Till. According to their defense, Till was hiding out in Chicago. • The trial lasted five days. • In the defense's closing argument, Milam and Bryant's attorney warned the jury about convicting the defendants: "Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I'm sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men." • The jury deliberated for only 67 minutes; according to one juror, it lasted that long only because they stopped to drink soda. The jury found Milam and Bryant not guilty. They concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove that the body recovered from the river was Emmett Till.

22. Fallout Mamie Till told the Chicago Defender after the trial that is was the biggest farce she had ever seen. The national press attacked the verdict as an insult to democracy and proof of the cancerous effects of racism in the Deep South. Though an acquittal was discussed in the press, most observers did not think that a jury would absolve Milam and Bryant while under the glare of national attention. The view persisted that what happened in the Till case was due to unwelcome outsiders who came to Tallahatchie County to force their views on others. We must give due condemnation to the N.A.A.C.P. spokesmen for their part in the case, wrote the Delta Democratic Times on September 23, 1955, For without their blanket accusations of decent people those local officials might otherwise have made an honest effort to do more.      Newspaper editorials denounced the decision of the Sumner jury. Good people everywhere, wrote The Daily Worker, in America and throughout the world-feel a deep sense of horror over the outcome of the murder trial in Mississippi

23. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt remarked to a reporter, It might be a reminder to us as a nation that we stand as the symbol of democracy to the world and that equal justice is looked upon as on the essential parts of democracy. The Communist Party declared the federal government should send troops into Mississippi, he wrote, in order to avenge the murder in 1955 of a fourteen year old Negro boy, Emmett Till. Despite the national uproar, President Eisenhower never commented publicly on the case. In Europe, there was universal condemnation of the verdict. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. on October 11, 1955, said that the lynch murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi was, in the eyes of Europe, a lynching of the Statue of Liberty. A Paris newspaper said, Never was there a more abominable travesty of the truth. In Germany a nation only a decade removed from its own especially noxious form of widespread lynching -- one editorial said the life of a Negro in Mississippi is not worth a whistle. Mississippis’s own Jackson Daily News published an editorial on September 25, 1955 that probably represented the feelings of many citizens in the delta. It read, Practically all the evidence against the defendants was circumstantial evidence. It is best for all concerned that the Bryant-Milam case be forgotten as quickly as possible. It has received far more publicity than it should have been given.

24. On January 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confession of Milam and Bryant, who had agreed to tell their story for $4,000. According to their confession, they beat Till with a .45 in Milam's barn. They proceeded to take him to the Tallahatchie River where they had him undress and then Milam shot him. A gin fan was tied around his neck with wire in order to weigh the body down in the river. They proceeded to burn Till's clothes and shoes. They would have just beat him, but Emmett would not back down.

25. After the Trial Moses Wright packed up his family and belongings and left Leflore County in fear of his life. Blacks who reported a crime committed by a white man to the police were not expected to live long in Mississippi. He never went back to Money and died in 1960. Roy Bryant and his wife returned to their grocery store and tried to resume a normal life. The black customers refused to do business with them any longer. The store was forced to close. Bryant’s white friends were very reluctant to give him any assistance whatsoever. Ostracized by his own community and with no job prospects, the Bryants later moved to Texas.  They were divorced in 1979. Half-brother J.W. Milam turned to farming after the Till murder., but local blacks refused to work for him and his crops eventually failed. Milam also moved to Texas for a time and labored in construction until he died from cancer in December 1981.

26. Update On May 10, 2004 the justice department reopened the case. The five year statue of limitations had expired for federal charges, but Mississippi authorities could prosecute. They reopened the case because there were potentially fourteen others involved. The grand jury decided not to pursue charges against Carolyn Bryant. There was not enough evidence. In March 2007, the FBI briefed Till’s family on their report. Till had died of a gunshot wound to the head and had broken wrist bones, skull and leg fractures.

27. In 1991, a seven-mile stretch of 71st street in Chicago was renamed "Emmett Till Memorial Highway". In 2006 and 2008 a Mississippi historical marker marking the place of Till's death was defaced, and in August 2007 it went missing. Less than a week later a replica was put up in its place. In 2005 the “James McCosh Math and Science Academy," where Till had been a student, was renamed the "Emmett Louis Till Math And Science Academy.” It is the first Chicago school to be named after a child. At the renaming ceremony, plans for an Emmett Till Museum on the school's grounds were discussed.

28. No one was ever convicted of any charges whatsoever relating to the murder of Emmett Till.