Emmett Till

Mississippi, August 28, 1955

On August 28, 1955, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago, Emmett Till, was brutally killed while visiting a family in Money, Mississippi, for flirting with a white woman four days ago. His perpetrators (a white woman's husband and his brother) sent Emmet a 75-pound cotton gin to the banks of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to strip. The two men then tried to beat him to death, hollowing out his eyes, shooting his head, and throwing his body into the river tied to a cotton gin with barbed wire.  The store's owner Roy Bryan and the woman's husband arrived from a business trip a few days later and learned about Emmett's conversation with his wife. Enraged, he proceeded to the house of Till's great uncle, Mose Wright, in the early morning hours of August 28 with his half-brother J.W. Milam. The couple insisted on seeing the boy; despite Wright's pleadings, they pushed Emmett into their car, they drove Till down to the Tallahatchie River after driving in the night and maybe beating him in a toolhouse behind Milam's shed. His body was discovered three days later, but it was so mutilated that Mose Wright could only identify it by an initialed ring. Authorities planned to bury the body as soon as possible, but Till's mother, Mamie Bradley, asked that it be returned to Chicago. On September 23, the all-white jury debated for less than an hour before returning a "not guilty" judgment, stating that the state had failed to prove the body's identity. Many people around the country were angered by the judgment and the state's decision not to pursue Milam and Bryant with abduction.