Being a child, it shocked and scared me that someone would kill a child no matter how many years ago it had happened. My parents were talking about this and Mother remarked that she remembered when the whole thing happened. A black kid whistled at a grown white woman? He was killed for that?! This bothered me to no end and I began to really think about this kid who was brutally murdered so long ago.
I went to my mother and asked her about what we had just seen on the television. She sat me down and told me, a little girl of six years, what happened to another kid named Emmett Till. I know many have heard this story over and over, but I feel it is important to post what happened, albeit a condensed version. There are those who have no idea about what happened; that a fourteen year old never had the chance to really experience life because of bigotry, ignorance, and intense hatred. Many do not know what impact his life, or death rather, would have on a fledgling civil rights movement. There are those who do not know that this event ignited the movement, in that finally, people of all races were able to see the atrocities that were being done to black people in the South, including innocent children. Finally, there was his brave mother, Mamie, who in her strength became a driving force in the civil rights movement. There are no new perspectives; mostly my own opinions and comments thrown into the story here and there.
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| Emmett and his mother, Mamie not long before he was murdered. Taken from chicagotribune.com. |
On August 31, 1955, a boy who was fishing discovered the severely swollen and disfigured body of a young black boy in the Tallahatchie River near Money, Mississippi. The boy was severely mutilated; he had been shot above the right ear, one of his eyes was dislodged from its socket; it was also found that he had been beaten on the back and the hips, not to mention he was bloated from being in the river for a few days. His nude body had been weighed down by a heavy cotton gin fan blade, which was tied with barbed around his neck. The body was later identified as that of 14 year old Emmett Till, a young boy from Chicago who was visiting family in the area. He had been reported missing three days earlier. The only way his Uncle Moses could identify him was that he was wearing a silver ring with the initials “L.T.” and “May 25, 1943” engraved on it.
Three days earlier, on August 28, Emmett was kidnapped in the middle of the night from his Great Uncle Moses Wright’s home by a bigot named Roy Bryant, and his bigoted half-brother J.W. Milam. Bryant’s attention seeking wife, Carolyn, had her girdle in a bunch because this black kid supposedly had come into the store and flirted with her, even whistled at her. This enraged Roy Bryant to no end, so he and his half-brother decided to find this “uppity n____” and teach him a lesson in manners.
So, at around 2:30 am in the morning, these two wastes of oxygen forced their way into the home of Moses Wright and kidnapped Emmett. They proceeded to beat the holy shit out of him. When poor Emmett would not say that they were better than him, Bryant and Milam dragged him to the Tallahatchie River, stripped him, beat him some more, then shot him in the head. They tied his body with barbed wire to a 75 pound cotton gin fan and threw him into the river like he was a piece of trash. His Uncle Moses reported him missing, as if the all-white law enforcement in Money gave a rat’s ass.
The story takes a twist after Emmett’s body was shipped back to Chicago. His mother, Mamie, insisted on an open casket funeral. Emmett’s body was displayed in a glass covered casket for five days. Mamie had also insisted that the mortician not fix Emmett’s face; it was to be as it was when he was found. Thousands came to the Robert’s Temple Church of God to see. Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender ran a story about the hate crime, even publishing the extremely graphic pictures of Emmett’s unbelievably ruined remains. (And NO I will not post them here. If you want to have a look, just google “Emmett Till” and you’ll see as many as you can stand.)
Even though Emmett's murder and the showing his body caused Mamie tremendous pain, she wanted the world to see what two white cowards had done to her son. She wanted to show the world what was happening in the deep South to black people; really make them see it. Black people were not safe and treated worse than shit, even the children. Why? Because they were black. That was their only “crime.”
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| Friends, this is pain! Taken from thedailybeast.com |
The trial commenced on September 19, 1955. (Extremely fast! Especially by today’s standards. If that had happened today, those two bozos would have probably went to trial a year or two later.) By this time, thanks to Jet Magazine and the Chicago Defender, Emmett’s murder had gotten national and international attention and outrage from both blacks and whites. Murdering a child, no matter what his or her color, was not right.
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| Mamie looking into Emmett's coffin. No mother should ever look like this. Taken from nbcnews.com. |
However, on September 23, an all-white male jury, (of course), acquitted Bryant and Milam. (Big shock there!) This joke…I can hardly call it a “jury”, sat in the jury room, smoked cigarettes and shot the shit for a good 67 minutes, before letting these two off. Then, and brace yourselves, a few months later, Bryant and Milam admitted to committing the crime in an article by Look magazine. Look magazine paid these two murderers some $4000 to tell how they kidnapped and brutally killed an innocent boy. Because of the Double Jeopardy law, no one could legally do a damn thing. Not that I disagree with that law, it’s a fair law. It just makes me puke that these admitted killers were able to go brag about killing a child to a freaking magazine. I am guessing this magazine is out of print now as I have never heard of it.
No justice for Emmett or his family.
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| J.W. Milam and his wife Juanita Carolyn (Poor white victim) and Roy Bryant just after their acquittal. Taken from clarion-ledger.com. |
After the article in Look came out, Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam, and their wives became pariahs. Most people, although probably knowing they had committed the crime and probably did not care, shunned the hell out of them after reading or hearing of their confession in the magazine. The store the Bryant’s owned—which had sold merchandise to black sharecroppers--lost its business and had to close. Roy and Carolyn Bryant later divorced and it is rumored that Milam and his wife Juanita divorced, but no records of this have been found. Both families left Mississippi for many years because of lack of work and ruined reputations, but later moved back. These two men died unredeemed, unremorseful, and shunned by most people. Milam died of cancer in 1981, Bryant died of cancer in 1994. (Cold comfort for Emmett Till’s family.) Juanita Milam died in 2014 at the age of 86. Carolyn Bryant Donham is now in her 80s and lives in a secret location. (To stop people from lynching her, I guess.)
Mamie Till came out to be one of the strongest women that I have ever read or heard about. Her insistence and strength helped to bring out the severe brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the South. Mamie Till graduated from Chicago Teacher's College in 1960, which became Chicago State University in 1971, and became a teacher. She remarried. His name was Gene Mobley, and they wed on June 24, 1957. She then changed her surname to Till-Mobley and continued her life as an activist working to educate people about what happened to her son. In 1976, she obtained a Master’s Degree in administration at Loyola University Chicago.
She continued to be an influential speaker for the remainder of her life. Mamie was a deeply religious person and this was the crux of her activism. She made comparisons between what happened to Jesus to what happened to Emmett. It has been said that these comparisons that made people begin to see Emmett as a martyr.
Mamie and Gene Mobley were happily married until Gene died from a stroke in 1999. Mamie Till-Mobley died of heart failure in 2003. She was 81 years old. That same year, her autobiography, written with Christoper Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America, was published. I HIGHLY recommend that everyone read this book! I, personally am sorry that I will never get to meet her in this life. It would have been a privilege to shake her hand and let her know that although I could never, ever know her pain, that she is an icon, not only to the civil rights movement, but to women.
Carolyn Bryant did some interviews some 10 years ago with Timothy B. Tyson, author of the new book, The Blood of Emmett Till--which came out last month; I have a copy ordered, and cannot wait to read it! She recanted her story, saying she lied about what happened in the store that day. (Trying to get some redemption before she meets her maker, I suppose.) A member of the Till family stated although he knew she was lying, her recantation finally proved to everyone that Emmett was not guilty of what she told everyone he had done. What struck me is that some people seemed to think Emmett brought his death on himself because of his “behavior.” Although it was a well known fact that in those days in the South, black folks absolutely did not want to piss off white folks, this thought makes me sick, He was the innocent here. Even if he had flirted with her, that did not justify murder. Perhaps her admitting that her lie got him killed brings some peace to what is left of his family.
Emmett Till did not die in vain.
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| Bryant's Grocery in 1955. Taken from nbcexcellence.org |
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| Bryant's Grocery today. Taken from Pintrest.com. |
Sources
Linder, Doug. "Emmett Till Murder Trial." Emmett Till Murder Trial. Umkc.edu, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2017. <http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/till/tilltriallinks.html>.
Crowe, Chris. Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case. New York: Phyllis Fogelman, 2003. Print.
Till-Mobley, Mamie, and Chris Benson. Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. New York: Ballantine, 2005. Print.
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