Who Killed Emmett Till
Share
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
On August 28, 1955, a young African American teenager named Emmett Till ventured to Money, Mississippi. The 14-year-old had been warned by his family and local civil rights advocates to be mindful of his appearance and behavior as racism and brutality against African Americans still ran rampant in the Deep South. Tragically, within days of his arrival he was brutally murdered in one of the most notorious and racially motivated hate crimes of the 20th century.
On the night of August 28, 1955, Emmett was brutally beaten and shot to death in retaliation for allegedly whistling at a white woman, 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, at her family’s grocery store. Three days later, Emmett’s mutilated and bloated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a 75-pound cotton gin fan secured around his neck with barbed wire. The crime shocked the world, and sparked the Civil Rights Movement.
At the end of September, two white men—Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam—were arrested for Emmett’s abduction and murder. Carolyn Bryant’s testimony was the only evidence that linked her husband and his half-brother to the kidnapping, a questionable act considering her husband had a pistol and knife with him the night of Emmett’s disappearance. To make matters worse, African Americans were not allowed to serve on the jury of the trial.
After 67 minutes of deliberation, the jury found the defendants not guilty, a shocking result in light of the clear evidence presented. The jury deliberation was also suspiciously short, considering the trial lasted five days. In 2017, more than 60 years later, a 2016 book revealed that Carolyn Bryant had recanted her testimony, and that her testimony was false from the very beginning.
Despite the verdict, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were unable to stifle the increasing outrage over the case. After a shocking interview with Look magazine where they confessed to the murder, outrage spread throughout the nation and helped drive the critical early momentum of the Civil Rights Movement. After the failure of the courts, the public demanded justice.