Emmett Till

Just as Jewish children are taught the horrible atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust, so should African American children be taught the atrocities of racism in America.

And just as Jewish children know … and should know … about Auscswitz, so should African American children know about Emmett Till.

Emmett Till was a 14-year old boy who lived in Chicago. In August of 1955, his mother, Mamie Till, sent him to Mississippi to visit relatives.

Emmett was not familiar with the ways of the south. He didn’t know that a person could be lynched for a number of seemingly insignificant incidents – including talking to or being perceived as having insulted a white woman.

So, when he visited his cousins and bragged about how in Chicago he not only talked to white women and showed them a picture of a white girl who was in his class at school, his cousins made a bet that he couldn’t and wouldn’t talk to a white woman in Mississippi!

Emmett took on the bet, and, after buying some candy in a local store, said, “Bye, Baby,” to Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who was the wife of the store’s owner. Carolyn reportedly was terrified and told her husband.

A few nights later, Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, and J.W. Milam, his brother-in-law, drove to the house of Mose Wright, Emmett’s uncle. Arriving at the house in the middle of the night, Bryant and Milam demanded that Wright hand over to them young Emmett. Though his uncle pleaded with the men to leave his nephew alone, they would not be dissuaded. They beat him almost unconscious, then drove toward the Tallahatchie River. Before they got to the river, they got an old fan which they would later (with the cord) tie around Emmett’s neck before throwing him into the river. Right before they killed him, they (by their own admission) asked Emmett if he had “had a white woman,” and he said yes. That did it. They shot him through his right eye, then tied the fan around his neck and dumped him in the river.

When his body was retrieved from the river, it was unrecognizable; he had been in the river for about 15 days by the time he was retrieved, and it was said that his skin was falling off his body. His mother Mamie recognized him mostly by a ring that had been his father’s that was still on his finger. She gathered up her son and took him back to Chicago for his funeral. She demanded that the coffin be left open and allowed reporters to take pictures because she wanted the world to see what Mississippi had done to her son.

Because of the uproar of people after they saw the picture, there was an outcry around the world about the injustice of it all. There was trial in Mississippi, presided over by a white judge and 12 white men. The trial lasted about four days, with Black people braving the racist system and openly accusing Bryant and Milam of the murder. (It was against the law for Black people to accuse whites of crimes. To do so meant almost certain death for the accusers.) In spite of compelling evidence as to the guilt of Bryant and Milam, they were acquitted after only 67 minutes of deliberation. The jurors said the verdict would have come even sooner had they not stopped to “get some pop.”

Milam and Bryant were never punished for killing Emmett Till. Federal officials tried to bring them up on kidnapping charges, but that was unsuccessful as well. After the verdict, they congratulated each other and lit up cigars. Later, they gave an exclusive interview to Look Magazine, confessing to the crime and giving all the gory details.

It was shortly after the acquittal of Bryant and Milam that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, sparking the Civil Rights Movement. The lynching of Emmett Till cost America a young boy, but birthed a movement for justice and equality that was long overdue.