54 Years Later: The Life and Death of Emmett Till

1955 was a tumultuous year for African Americans in the south. In Mississippi, over 500 blacks had been lynched since 1882. Racially motivated murders were not uncommon in the Mississippi Delta and Mamie Till Bradley a schoolteacher in Chicago tried her best to school her 14-year-old son, Emmett about that prior to his trip to the Delta where she had relatives.

 

On August 20, 1955, Emmett Till boarded a train with his cousin Curtis Jones to Mississippi. On August 21 the two boys arrived in Money, Mississippi a small cotton gin town on the eastern edge of the Mississippi delta where they stayed at the home of their great-uncle Moses Wright.

 

On August 24, Till, his cousin and some friends drove into town and stopped at Bryant's Grocery store to buy some candy. Prior to entering the store, Till pulled out some pictures of his white friends in Chicago and showed them to some local boys. The boys dared Till to talk to Carolyn Bryant, the white store clerk. Till went into the store, purchased some candy, and what happened as he was leaving is unclear. Till either said, "Bye, baby" or he whistled at Carolyn Bryant according to witnesses.

 

Within hours, Till's bold act spread through the small town like wildfire. Word reached the White woman's husband, Roy Bryant, and when the husband returned from a road trip, he and a relative, J.W. Milam, decided to teach Till a lesson. 

 

Bryant and Milam appeared at Till's Uncle's home one afternoon where they forced their way into the back bedroom where Emmett was sleeping, and then they forced him to leave with them. "There was nothing I could do,” said Wright, “When I opened the door, there was a man standing with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand.”

 

Till’s Uncle pleaded with them to just whip Till, but they ignored Wright’s pleadings and took a young Emmett against his will. As they were leaving, they threatened to kill Wright if he told anyone. That was the last time anyone in his family saw Emmett Till alive. Three days later, a fisherman found Till’s naked, mutilated body in the Tallahatchie River.

 

It had been weighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan, which was tied around Till's neck with barbed wire. His face was so mutilated that his Uncle was only able to identify his nephews body by the ring that Till had been wearing, the one that belonged to his deceased father.

 

Mamie Till had a hard time getting her son's body sent back to Chicago, when it finally arrived she made the decision to have an open casket funeral. Mrs. Till wanted the world to know what had happened to her son. His right eye was missing, his nose was broken, and there was a hole in the side of his head.

 

Almost immediately after the kidnapping, police from Tallahatchie County and Leflore County arrested Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam and charged them with kidnapping. Both men admitted taking Till from his uncle’s home but denied they killed him.  Police raised the charges once Till's body was found.

 

The trial, held in a segregated courtroom in Mississippi, lasted only one week before the all white jury, after deliberating an hour, found the two men innocent of the horrific crime on September 23, 1955.

 

After the trial, African American’s boycotted the Bryant’s' store forcing them out of business. Both Milam and Bryant remained in Mississippi until their deaths; Milam died of cancer in 1980 and Bryant died of cancer in 1994.

 

Eventually, Till’s death became an international news story. Over forty-five thousand people attended Till’s funeral. Jet magazine ran photos of Till's body. On January 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confession of Milam and Bryant; they agreed to tell their story for $4,000. During their confession, Milam and Bryant admitted they took Till to Milam’s barn where they began pistol-whipping him before they took him to the Tallahatchie River where they forced him to undress and then shot him. A gin fan was tied around his neck with wire in order to weigh the body down. They later burned Till's clothes and shoes.

 

Till’s death and the trial of his murderers galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Three months later, on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white man on a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her act of civil disobedience led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Fifty years after Emmett Till's mutilated, battered body had been found in the Tallahatchie River, Federal authorities ordered the exhumation of his body as part of a new investigation into Emmett's kidnapping and death. The autopsy was long overdue. Just before noon, with a minister and the FBI present, the burial site shrouded in a white tent began digging until the concrete vault holding Till’s original glass-top coffin was exhumed and then hauled off by a flatbed truck surrounded by police cars as they headed to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

 

Simeon Wright, a first cousin of Emmett's mother waited at the gravesite and told reporters, "I was sad in 1955. My heart was broken then, but now I'm not sad," Mr. Wright said, adding, "We are almost at the end of it."

Wright, now 62, was sharing a room with Emmett on the night he was kidnapped from their Great Uncle’s home. "The last time I saw him, some men were forcing him to get out of bed and get his clothes on, and that was it," Wright said. "I never dreamed we would finally get to this day."

 

In 2005, the body of Emmett Till was exhumed as a new probe of his senseless murder was set to begin. When he was reburied, he was reburied in a new casket. The original casket was supposed to be kept for a planned memorial to Till. Instead it was  found in a rusty shed in a Burr Oak Cemetery shed where workers are accused of digging up and dumping hundreds of bodies in a scheme to resell the burial plots. It was surrounded by garbage and old headstones.

 

Now, Emmett Till’s casket will become a source of inspiration for future generations as it is set to go on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., museum. "Part of the responsibility of a national museum is to help people to remember, and through this donation we will ensure that future generations will remember how the death of a child, a mother's courage, helped to transform America," said Lonnie Bunch, a former Chicago Historical Society president who leads the Smithsonian's planned National Museum of African American History and Culture. Perhaps now, 54 years after his life was taken over words he allegedly uttered to a White woman, Emmett Till can finally rest in eternal, undisturbed peace.

 

By Alicia Cruz
Senior writer
Theblackurbantimes