Emmett Till

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of Louis and Mamie Till. Till never knew his father, a private in the United States Army during World War II. Mamie and Louis Till separated in 1942, and three years later, the family received word from the Army that he had been executed for “willful misconduct” while serving in Italy.

Emmett Till's mother was an extraordinary woman. Challenging the social constraints and discrimination she faced as an African American woman growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, Mamie Till excelled both academically and professionally. She was the fourth black student to graduate from suburban Chicago's predominantly white Argo Community High School, and the first black student to make the school's “A” Honor Roll. While raising Emmett as a single mother, she worked long hours for the Air Force as a clerk in charge of confidential files.

Emmett Till grew up in a middle-class black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. The neighborhood was a haven for black-owned businesses, and the streets he roamed as a child were lined with black-owned insurance companies, pharmacies and beauty salons as well as nightclubs where Duke Ellington performed. Emmett was known as a responsible, funny, and high-spirited child. He caught polio at the age of 5, but managed to make a full recovery, save a slight stutter that remained with him for the rest of his life.

With his mother often working more than 12-hour days, Emmett took on all the house responsibility at a very young age. His mother stated that everything was on his shoulders, and Emmett took it upon himself. “He told me if I would work, and make the money, he would take care of everything else. He cleaned, and he cooked quite a bit. And he even took over the laundry.”

Emmett attended the all-black McCosh Grammar School. He made a lot of friends at McCosh. He was known as a funny guy who had a ton of jokes to tell. Emmett loved to make people laugh.

In August 1955, Emmett's great uncle, Moses Wright, came up from Mississippi to visit the family in Chicago. At the end of his stay, Wright was planning to take Emmett's cousin, Wheeler Parker, back to Mississippi with him to visit relatives down South, and when Emmett, who was just 14 years old at the time, learned of these plans, he begged his mother to let him go along. Initially, his mother was opposed to the idea. She wanted to take a road trip to Omaha, Nebraska, and tried to convince her son to join her with the promise of open-road driving lessons. But Emmett desperately wanted to spend time with his cousins in Mississippi, and in a fateful decision that would have grave impact on their lives and the course of American history, his mother gave in and let him go.

On August 19, 1955, the day before Emmett left with his uncle and cousin for Mississippi, his mother gave him his father's signet ring, engraved with the initials "L.T." The next day she drove her son to the 63rd Street station in Chicago. They kissed goodbye, and Emmett boarded a southbound train headed for Mississippi. It was the last time they ever saw each other.

Three days after arriving in Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, Emmett Till and a group of teenagers entered Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market to buy refreshments after a long day picking cotton in the hot afternoon sun. Emmett purchased bubble gum, and it was said that he flirted with or touched the hand of the store's white female clerk, and wife of the owner, Carolyn Bryant.

Four days later, at approximately 2:30 AM on August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant, Carolyn's husband, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, kidnapped Emmett from Moses Wright's home. They then beat him brutally, dragged him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and shoved his mutilated body into the water. Moses Wright reported Emmett’s disappearance to the local authorities, and three days later, his corpse was pulled out of the river. His face was mutilated beyond recognition, and Wright only managed to positively identify him by the ring on his finger, engraved with his father's initials, “L.T.”

Emmett’s body was shipped to Chicago, where his mother opted to have an open-casket funeral with his body on display for five days. With his body water-soaked and defaced, most people would have kept the casket covered. More than 100,000 people came to the Roberts Temple Church of God to see the evidence of this brutal hate crime. His mother said that, despite the enormous pain it caused her to see her son's dead body on display, she opted for an open-casket funeral in an effort to "let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like."

By the time the trial commenced on September 19, 1955, Emmett Till's murder had become a source of outrage and indignation throughout the country. Because blacks and women were barred from serving jury duty, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were tried before an all-white, all-male jury. Moses Wright took the stand and identified Bryant and Milam as Till's kidnappers and killers. At the time, it was unheard of for blacks to openly accuse whites in court, and by doing so, Wright put his own life in grave danger.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the defendants' guilt and widespread pleas for justice from outside Mississippi, on September 23, the panel of white male jurors acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges. Their deliberations lasted a mere 67 minutes. A few months later, in January 1956, Bryant and Milam admitted to committing the crime. Protected by double jeopardy laws, they told the whole story of how they kidnapped and killed Emmett Till to “Look” magazine for $4,000.

Coming only one year after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in “Brown v. Board of Education” mandated the end of racial segregation in public schools, Emmett Till's death provided an important catalyst for the American Civil Rights Movement. One hundred days after Emmett’s murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, sparking the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks stated “I thought about Emmett Till, and I couldn't go back.” Nine years later, Congress passed the “Civil Rights Act of 1964”, outlawing many forms of racial discrimination and segregation. In 1965, the “Voting Rights Act”, outlawing discriminatory voting practices, was passed.

Though she never stopped feeling the pain of her son's death, Mamie Till recognized that what happened to her son helped open Americans' eyes to the racial hatred plaguing the country, and in doing so helped spark a massive protest movement for racial equality and justice. “People really didn't know that things this horrible could take place. And the fact that it happened to a child, that make all the difference in the world.”