Emmett Till was born in 1941, the son of Mamie and Louis Till. Emmett was raised without a father, her mother separating from Louis in 1942 after she found out he had a chick on the side. The marriage had never been a good one, with Louis constantly abusing her. She eventually got a stay away order from the court, but as with all abusers it was little more than a piece of paper. After an incident in which he choked her into unconsciousness, Louis was given an ultimatum. Go to a 1943 Mississippi prison or enlist in the U.S. Army. In 1945, a few weeks before his son’s fourth birthday, he was executed for the murder of an Italian woman. Now it may seem odd to you that I wrote, “Go to a 1943 Mississippi prison.” I did that on purpose. Many of you are familiar with the movie ” Life,” starring Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and Bernie Mack. Well that’s a 1943 Mississippi prison. To those who are not familiar you can see a clip here. Believe me, it was an easy choice.
In 1955, Mamie Till’s uncle Bradley visited them in Chicago. Telling Emmett stories about living in the Delta, naturally Emmett was to go down there. His mother, having been raised in the deep south had reservations about him going there, but in time gave in. But before he left his mother warned him, Chicago and Mississippi were two different worlds, and he should know how to behave in front of whites in the South. In 1955, Emmett was stocky and muscular; he weighed about 150 pounds and stood 5 feet 4 inches. He was 14 years old. Till arrived in Money, Mississippi, in August of 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 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. What would follow from this seemingly innocent juxtaposition, would be destined to go down in American history as one of the most heinous crimes ever committed by a group of white racist on a child.
According to some folks, including comments from some of the kids standing outside the store, Till may have wolf-whistled at Bryant. Till’s cousin, Simeon Wright, who was with him at the store stated Till whistled at Bryant, saying “I think Emmett wanted to get a laugh out of us or something. He was always joking around, and it was hard to tell when he was serious.” Wright, said it shocked them to death. 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. Following his disappearance, a newspaper account stated that Till sometimes whistled to alleviate his stuttering. His speech was sometimes unclear and 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. I’m going to take a cussing break here, because we all know what had happened to the child, so give me a second…………
When Roy Bryant was informed of what had happened, he tracked downed and questioned several young black men who entered the store. Later, 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 seen what happened. Friends or parents vouched for the boy in Bryant’s store, and Carolyn’s companion said that the boy Bryant and Washington had seized was not the one who had accosted her. Here history is a little clouded, but someone told Bryant, Emmett was the one who had whistled at his southern bell. History does not say who, but my money is on the boy they picked up from the road, either him or his parents. After all, whistling at a white woman in 1943 “Money, Mississippi,” was big news!! Everybody knew who did it.
In the early morning hours—between 2:00 am and 3:30 am—on August 28, 1955, Bryant and Milam, Bryants brother, 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 and there were eight people in the small two-bedroom cabin. Milam asked Wright to take them to “the nigger who did the talking.” They tied up Till in the back of a green pickup truck and drove to Money, Mississippi. According to some people, they took Till back to Bryant’s Groceries and recruited two black men. The men then drove to a barn in Drew Mississippi. They pistol-whipped him on the way and reportedly knocked him unconscious. Another witness Willie 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 allegedly forced to help with the beating. Yep, them country “nigg&#,” help beat that black child to death. 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 Leroy “Too Tight” 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. The group drove back to Roy Bryant’s home in Money, where they reportedly burned Emmett’s clothes.
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. Both Bryant and Milam were acquitted of for capital murder. On September 23 the all-white, all-male jury acquitted both defendants after a 67-minute deliberation, with one juror saying, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.” These were some hardened weather worn redneck racist. In a interview with “Look Magazine,” in 1956, JW Milan said,
“Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I’m no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers—in their place—I know how to work ’em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he’s tired o’ livin’. I’m likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ’em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I’m going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’
Milan died in 1980 at the age of 61 and Bryant went to hell in September 1st, 1994. But the woman behind the atrocity is still alive. Carolyn Bryant is now 84 years old. According to Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University professor, after decades of keeping silent, she revealed to him that her long-ago allegations that Emmett grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her, “that part is not true.” Okay, another cussing break….. That part is not true… During the trial Carolyn Bryant was not indicted. There is no law against telling your husband you were molested. She did testify, but not with the jury present. However because of her actions a young boy was savagely beaten to death and his body thrown into a muddy creek, where it laid for days before being found. According to the New York Times,
“The federal government has quietly revived its investigation into the murder of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy whose abduction and killing remains, almost 63 years later, among the starkest and most searing examples of racial violence in the South.
The Justice Department said that its renewed inquiry, which it described in a report submitted to Congress in late March, was “based upon the discovery of new information.” It is not clear, though, whether the government will be able to bring charges against anyone: Most episodes investigated in recent years as part of a federal effort to re-examine racially motivated murders have not led to prosecutions, or even referrals to state authorities.
The Justice Department declined to comment on Thursday, but it appeared that the government had chosen to devote new attention to the case after a central witness, Carolyn Bryant Donham, recanted parts of her account of what transpired in August 1955.”
The killing of Emmett Till in 1955, would set off the beginning of one of the greatest civil rights era’s in modern history.
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