Emmett Till
Emmett Louis Till was a young African American boy born in 1941 near Chicago, Illinois, who became a central figure in the civil rights movement after his tragic murder in Mississippi in 1955. His visit to relatives in the racially charged environment of the South ended in his abduction, torture, and murder following an alleged encounter with a White woman at a store. The subsequent trial of his murderers, which resulted in their acquittal by an all-White jury, sparked outrage nationally, as his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, bravely decided to hold an open-casket funeral to reveal the brutality of the crime. Till's lynching galvanized public sentiment, leading to increased activism and calls for civil rights reforms. The case has been revisited over the decades through various artistic and educational mediums, ensuring that the lessons of racial violence and injustice remain prominent in American consciousness. Legislative efforts, such as the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, have aimed to address the historical injustices associated with lynching, symbolizing a continued commitment to confronting racism. In 2022, a national monument honoring Till and his mother was established, while a recent film about their experiences further highlights their enduring legacy.
Emmett Till
Hate crime victim
- Born: July 25, 1941
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: August 28, 1955
- Place of death: Tallahatchie, Mississippi
Lynching victim
Till’s lynching in 1955 became a rallying cry for civil rights. The Black American press and major civil rights organizations saw his unpunished murder as proof that the legacy of Jim Crow laws and the South’s virulent racism would not die out without a fight.
Area of achievement: Social issues
Early Life
Emmett Louis Till was born near Chicago, Illinois, in 1941. His parents, Louis Till and Mamie Till-Mobley, hailed from the South. Like many other Black Americans, the couple moved north during the Great Migration of the early twentieth century in search of a better life in urban areas. While racism and segregation still existed in the North, there were more opportunities for education, a wider range of jobs, and powerful Black institutions to support Black communities and ward off the worst types of racial injustice.
Louis died in Italy during World War II. Mamie remarried, then divorced. To support herself and her son, she worked as an examiner in the Air Force Procurement Office. Till, who had overcome polio as a toddler, attended racially segregated schools in Chicago. Friends described him as an outgoing child despite a lingering stutter from the bout with polio.
Life’s Work
In August 1955, Till’s mother sent him to Mississippi to visit relatives. It was there that he, his cousins, and some friends went to a local store in the town of Money, Mississippi. Accounts vary as to what happened after Till entered the store, which was attended by a White woman, Carolyn Bryant. According to Bryant, Till accosted her and made lewd remarks. According to Till’s cousins, he whistled at her, and perhaps said “Bye, baby!” Whatever the case, Bryant believed Till had broken a cardinal rule of White supremacy: A Black man was never allowed to show an attraction to a White woman. When Bryant’s husband, Roy, found out about the incident, he and his friend J. W. Milam kidnapped Till from his relatives’ home and brutally tortured and murdered him. They dumped his body in a river, weighing it down with metal parts from a cotton gin. When Till’s body was found, it was so mutilated and bloated that it was difficult to identify him.
When her son’s body was returned to her in Chicago, Mamie Till Bradley made a decision that shocked the world and galvanized a generation of civil rights activists: She requested an open coffin and a public funeral, and allowed The Chicago Defender and Jet magazine to publish photographs of Till’s brutalized corpse. The pictures and the story outraged Black people as well as many White people in the country, many of whom could not believe that lynching and perceptions of Black Americans as sexual predators persisted in Mississippi. The Defender argued in a subsequent editorial that southern White politicians who campaigned on segregationist platforms had “charged the atmosphere . . . for acts of racial violence.” In contrast, in Mississippi and other parts of the South, White newspapers claimed that Till had deserved his fate. Others suggested that Till was still alive and the murder case was a conspiracy by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to sully the reputation of the South. Many White writers accused the NAACP of “rabble rousing” and unfairly targeting Mississippi.
When Roy Bryant and Milam were arrested and put on trial, journalists from around the world flocked to the courtroom. Thus, the whole world heard when the all-White jury returned a verdict of not guilty. In 1956, Bryant and Milam sold their story to Look magazine for thousands of dollars, recounting exactly how they kidnapped and lynched Till. Beyond the reach of the law because of the double jeopardy protection principle, the pair lived out their days as free men. Neither ever expressed remorse.
Significance
After the trial, tens of thousands of outraged citizens sent letters to their congressional representatives and the White House, Black and White newspapers printed editorials lambasting the jury’s decision, and membership in the NAACP increased exponentially. Till’s mother spoke publicly about the murder of her son, exhorting listeners to never forget and to fight for justice.
Till’s lynching made people realize that even after Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional, much more needed to be done to improve the status of Black Americans and ensure their civil rights. Many artists, including poet Gwendolyn Brooks, authors Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, and folk singer Bob Dylan, created works based on the Till case. Decades later, television shows and documentaries revisited Till’s murder, introducing the tragedy to a new generation.
Till’s lynching and death, the injustices of racial discrimination that allowed his murderers to walk free, and his mother’s determination to show the nation what White supremacist attitudes had done to her son remain potent lessons of the legacy of racism in the United States. In the twenty-first century, Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Justice Department, and other agencies reopened and revisited the rigged trials and lax investigations of other civil rights murders. Congressman John Robert Lewis of Georgia introduced H.R. 923, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, to provide funding to reinvestigate crimes against civil rights workers and their allies. The bill was signed into law in 2008 and reauthorized in 2016. Thus, Till’s name remained synonymous with the infamous racial crimes of the mid-twentieth century, and his image continued to haunt the nation’s conscience.
In 2018, the year after a book about the killing that included comments from Bryant indicating that she had lied in her testimony during the trial was published, it was announced that the federal government had reopened an investigation into the murder due to reported new information in the case. However, Bryant allegedly denied that the author's claim about her recanting her testimony was true, resulting in the closure of this new Justice Department probe in 2021. Still, despite many failures to do so in the decades following Till's murder, in early 2022 Congress passed an antilynching bill that designated lynching as a federal hate crime. President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law in March of that year.
Though a prominent Confederate monument stood nearby, the Mississippi town of Greenwood was noted for erecting a nine-foot statue of Till in one of its parks in October 2022. That same month, a new film focusing on both the trauma experienced by Mamie Till-Mobley as well as her activist efforts over the murder of her son, titled Till, began showing in theaters. In July 2023, a national monument honoring both Till and his mother, encompassing the site of the finding of his body, the site of his funeral, and the site of his murder trial, was designated via a proclamation from Biden.
Bibliography
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Houck, Davis W., and Matthew Grindy. Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press. UPress of Mississippi, 2008.
McLaughlin, Eliott C., and Emanuella Grinberg. "Justice Department Reopens Investigation into 63-Year-Old Murder of Emmett Till." CNN, www.cnn.com/2018/07/12/us/emmett-till-murder-case-reopened-doj/index.html. Accessed 3 Aug. 2018.
Metress, Christopher. The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative. U of Virginia P, 2002.
Pettus, Emily Wagster. "'Change Has Come': Mississippi Unveils Emmett Till Statue." Associated Press, 21 Oct. 2022, apnews.com/article/emmett-till-illinois-mississippi-chicago-greenwood-3f3b5d2324b97bdde30249cd40357ebb. Accessed 6 Dec. 2022.
Sprunt, Barbara, and Juliana Kim. "Biden Designates a National Monument Honoring Emmett Till and His Mother." NPR, 25 July 2023, www.npr.org/2023/07/23/1189664409/emmett-till-national-monuments-biden. Accessed 14 Aug. 2023.
Sullivan, Kate, and Maegan Vazquez. "Biden Signs Bill Making Lynching a Federal Hate Crime into Law." CNN, 30 Mar. 2022, www.cnn.com/2022/03/29/politics/biden-emmett-till-antilynching-act/index.html. Accessed 11 Apr. 2022.
Tyson, Timothy B. The Blood of Emmett Till. Simon & Schuster, 2017.
Whitfield, Stephen J. A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till. Free Press, 1988.