Till lynching
The Till lynching refers to the brutal murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy, in Mississippi in 1955. The incident arose after Till allegedly whistled at a white woman, leading to his kidnapping and horrific beating by two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam. His body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River three days later, and an all-white jury acquitted Bryant and Milam after a brief deliberation. The open-casket funeral held by Till's mother in Chicago, along with graphic media coverage of his mutilated body, sparked widespread outrage and became a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.
Despite the acquittal, the case prompted ongoing investigations into racial violence. In 2004, a renewed federal inquiry was launched, which, although it did not result in charges, spurred legislative efforts, including the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Act of 2008. Most recently, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law in 2022, designating lynching as a federal hate crime. The legacy of Till’s murder continues to resonate, highlighting persistent issues of racial injustice and the struggle for civil rights in the United States.
Till lynching
The Event Murder of a Black American youth who merely whistled at a White woman
Date August 28, 1955
Place Money, Mississippi
Emmett Till’s widely publicized murder helped make Americans more aware of the depth of racism that still existed in the United States.
A Black American youth, Emmett Till was born in Chicago in 1941. Shortly after he turned fourteen, his mother sent him to visit relatives in the small town of Money, Mississippi. On the afternoon of August 24, 1955, Till and a group of other teenagers went to a grocery store to buy candy and soft drinks. Till reportedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant, the wife of Roy Bryant, the store’s White owner.
Early in the morning of August 28, Roy Bryant and his brother, J. W. Milam, kidnapped Till from his great uncle’s home. The men beat him and shot him in the head and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. Till’s mutilated and badly decomposed body was found three days later by a fisherman. Bryant and Milam were tried for Till’s kidnapping and murder. After deliberating for only one hour, the all-White jury acquitted them. Later, Milam sold his story to Look magazine; in the article, he confessed to the killing. Neither Bryant nor Milam was ever convicted for Till’s murder.
Impact
Till’s remains were shipped to Chicago, where his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral. An estimated fifty thousand people came to see his body. Photographs of his corpse were also published in Jet magazine, and the murder was covered by magazines and newspapers all over the world. The murder case, and the subsequent lack of justice, is considered a major catalyst to the civil rights movement.
Subsequent Events
In May 2004, the US Justice Department announced that it was reopening its investigation into Till’s murder. The two men tried for Till’s murder decades earlier had been acquitted of all charges and had since died. However, evidence remained implicating other, still living, men in Till’s lynching. The five-year federal statute of limitations had long since lapsed, but anyone charged with the murder could still be tried in a state court. Though the resultant investigation did not lead to any indictments, it helped legislators to pass the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Act signed in 2008 by President George W. Bush. With this act, the Justice Department was provided additional funds to conduct probes of other murders related to civil rights that were committed before 1970, and in 2016 President Barack Obama signed its reauthorization into law. While potential new evidence, coming from a book published in 2017, regarding the truth of Carolyn Bryant's testimony prompted a renewed federal probe into the case, by 2021 the Justice Department had announced a closing of this investigation.
Though over the years several attempts had been made to legislatively criminalize lynching at the federal level, none had succeeded in congressional passage. However, in March 2022, after it had been approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law by President Joe Biden. Under this new legislation, lynching was made a federal hate crime.
Bibliography
Benson, Christopher D. "Scalia's Role in the Emmett Till Case." Chicago Tribune, 19 Feb. 2016, www.chicagotribune.com/history/ct-emmett-till-scalia-king-kennedy-flashback-perspec-0221-jm-20160219-story.html. Accessed 6 Apr. 2022.
"Federal Officials Close Cold Case Re-investigation of Murder of Emmett Till." United States Department of Justice, 6 Dec. 2021, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-officials-close-cold-case-re-investigation-murder-emmett-till. Accessed 6 Apr. 2022.
Metress, Christopher, ed. The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002.
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 6 Apr. 2022.
Till-Mobley, Mamie, and Christopher Benson. Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. New York: Random House, 2003.