EMMETT LOUIS TILL.
THE PIVITOL EVENT IN MOTIVATIONG THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Emmett Louis Till was son of Mamie Cartham and Louis Till. He was born in Chicago July 25, 1941 on Friday he was murdered on Sunday August 28, 1955 by the hands of Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam pictured below, which today has not been found guilty of his murder.
As stated by his mother Mamie in her video biography which she wanted the world to see and hear. She stated “when he was a difficult birth he was a breech baby he came out foot first” and Emmett was a strong and independent young man”. Emmett was weighing approximately 150 pounds his height was approximately 5 feet 4 inches at age 14 before his death. “He was known as a prankster very intelligent and excelled in science and loved life”.
In August 1955, Till’s great uncle, Moses Wright, came up from Mississippi to visit the family in Chicago. At the end of his stay, Wright decided to take Emmett cousin Wheeler Parker, back with him to visit relatives down South, and when he heard of this he asked permission from the entire family and begged his mother to let him go along. On that particular day he was to leave it was impossible for him and his mother to get out of the house.
They finally reached the train station and Emmett ran up the stairs to catch the train. His mother said wait a minute are you not going to give me a kiss I do not know if I will ever see you again. Emmett kissed his mother and gave her his watch. She said what about your ring. He kept it for he wanted to show it when he arrive to the south.
When they arrived in Money, Mississippi it was high harvest for cotton picking in the fields. He and his cousin were too young they hung out there and played. At night after supper they would go to the country store. That particular day Emmett went in and purchased bubble gum. He then came out the store and made a wolf whistle he normally would do a whistle when he had trouble speaking for he stammered a lot in saying certain words at the time the owner of the store came to and heard and made her own assumptions. Which she stated that he made sexual advances to her and grabbed her hand besides the whistle. She drove off in her car
Emmett and his cousins were in their car afterwards driving and saw a car following them.
They panicked thinking that the lady at the time Bryant told someone and had them followed. They were scared and pulled their car over jumped out and ran through cotton fields and were hurt by the stems of the trees. The car span away and they signed with relief and came back to the car and drove home. Days later they were spotted and identified.
In the early morning hours—between 2:00 am and 3:30 am—on August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant, J.W.Milam, and another man went to Moose Wright’s house. J.W.Milam was armed with a pistol and a flashlight. He asked Mose Wright if he had three boys in the house from Chicago. He said yes. They said to Moses to take them to “the nigger who did the talking”. He showed them. the room Emmett shared a bed with another cousin; there were eight people in the small two-bedroom cabin. Milam asked Wright “. When they asked Emmett if it was him, he replied, “Yeah”, they hated the fact that he did not say sir it angered them so much that they threatened to shoot him and told him to get dressed. Emmett struggled to put on his clothes and was taken.
The men threatened to kill Wright if he reported what he had seen. Emmett great-aunt offered the men money, but they did refuse it. They put Emmett Till in the back of a pickup truck and drove to a barn at the Clint Shurden Plantation.
In the barn Emmett Till was Pistol Whipped in his face and placed in the bed of the pickup truck again and covered with a tarpaulin. Throughout the course of the night, Roy Bryant, J Milam, and witnesses recall them being in several locations with Emmett. According to some witnesses, they took Till to a shed behind Milam’s home in the nearby town of Glendora Township there they beat him again and tried to decide what to do. Witnesses recall between two and four white men and two and four black men who were either in or surrounding the pickup truck where Emmett Till was seated. Others passed by J Milam’s shed to the sounds of someone being beaten. Accounts differ as to when Till was shot; either in Milam’s shed or by the Tallahatchie River. He was driven to Bryant’s store where several people noticed blood pooling in the truck bed. Roy Bryant explained he killed a deer, and in one instance showed the body to a black man who questioned him, saying “that’s what happens to smart niggers
Mose Wright stayed on his front porch for twenty minutes waiting for Till to return. He did not go back to bed. He and another man went into Money, to get gasoline, and drove around trying to find Emmett. Unsuccessful, they returned home by 8:00 am. Mose Wright did not call the police because he feared for his life; Curtis Jones placed a call to the Leflore County sheriff and another to his mother in Chicago. Mose Wright and his wife also drove to Summer Township where Elizabeth Wright’s brother contacted the sheriff.
Bryant and Milam were questioned by Leflore County sheriff George Smith. They admitted they had taken the boy from his great-uncle’s yard but claimed they had released him the same night in front of the store he owned. Bryant and Milam were arrested for kidnapping .Word got out that the young boy from Chicago Emmett Till was missing, and soon Mississippi state field secretary Mr. Medgar Evers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Amzie Moore, head of the Bolivar County chapter, became involved, disguising themselves as cotton pickers and going into the cotton fields in search of any information that might help find Till. After gathering their information Medgar was followed and attacked.
Three days after his abduction, Emmett Till’s swollen and disfigured body which was now in the process of decomposing filled with water was found by two boys fishing in the Tallahatchie River. His head was very badly damaged. He had been shot above the right ear, an eye was dislodged from the socket, there was evidence that he had been beaten on the back and the hips, and his body weighted to the fan blade, which was fastened around his neck with barbed wire. He was nude, but wearing a silver ring with the initials “L. T.” and “May 25, 1943” carved in it.
To make this quiet and go away the sheriff ordered that the burial be held that day. The order was executed Till’s body was clothed, packed in lime, and put in a pine coffin and prepared for burial… Mamie Till Bradley demanded that the body be sent to Chicago; she later stated that she endeavored to halt an immediate burial in Mississippi and called several local and state authorities in Illinois and Mississippi to make sure that her son was returned to Chicago. The time of them taking the body to the grave site to be placed in the ground and executive state order was received not to bury Emmett Till body in Mississippi but for them to send the deceased body back to Chicago for proper burial. This angered the entire region of Mississippi.
News about Emmett Till spread to both coasts. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and Illinois Governor William Straton also became involved, urging Governor White to see that justice be done. The tone in Mississippi newspapers changed dramatically. They falsely reported riots in the funeral home in Chicago. Rumors of an invasion of outraged blacks and northern whites were printed throughout the state so that the Leflore County sheriff took them seriously. Local businessman, surgeon, and civil rights proponent T.R.M. Howard one of the wealthiest blacks in the state, warned of a “second civil war” if “slaughtering of Negroes” was allowed. Following Wilkins’ comments, white opinion began to shift. According to historian Stephen Whitfield, a specific brand of Xenophobia in the South was particularly strong in Mississippi, urging whites to reject the influence of Northern opinion and agitation. This independent attitude was profound enough in Tallahatchie County that it earned the nickname “The Free state of Tallahatchie”, according to a former sheriff, “because people here do what they damn well please”, making the county often difficult to govern.
Consequently, Tallahatchie County Sheriff Clarence Strider, who initially positively identified Till’s body and stated that the case against Milam and Bryant was “pretty good”, on September 3 announced his doubts that the body pulled from the Tallahatchie River was Till’s, who, he speculated, was probably still alive. The body, according to Strider, was planted by the NAACP: a cadaver stolen by T. R. M. Howard, who colluded to place Till’s ring on it. Strider was motivated to change after the comments made in the press about the people of Mississippi, later saying, “The last thing I wanted to do was to defend those peckerwoods. But I just had no choice about it.”
Bryant and Milam were indicted for murder, despite the reservations of the grand jury’s prosecuting attorney, Hamilton Caldwell, who was not confident a conviction would ever be returned in a case of white violence against a black male accused of insulting a white woman. A local black paper was surprised at the indictment and praised the decision, as did the New York Times. The high profile comments made in Northern newspapers and by the NAACP concerned the prosecuting attorney, Gerald Chatham, who worried that they would not be able to secure a guilty verdict, even with the evidence they had. Initially, with limited funds, Bryant and Milam had difficulty finding attorneys to represent them, but five attorneys at a Sumner law firm offered their services to defend Roy Bryan and J.W. Milam a Collection of donation jars were placed in every store and all public places in the Delta, eventually gathering $10,000 for the defense.
Mean while as the legalities started in Mississippi Emmet Louis Till Body was taken back to Chicago was taken back to his state. When the casket arrived where his body was put his mother fell to tears.
It was stated to her by Funeral Director AA Rayner that is prohibited from opening the casket. As Stated by her “Mr. Rayner do you have a hammer he said yes I am going to open it. He said I will do it go home rest and I will call you to come and view the body.
Three entire of blocks were engulfed with the smell from the decaying body. When Mamie saw the body while her father and Rafield was with her, this what she stated she saw as was stated before this is the second confirmation in her own words from her video bio “ His tongue was choked out and hanging down to the bottom of his chin 2nd the right eye was out lying mid cheek 3rd when I looked for the other eye it was gone 4th the bridge of Emmett bridge of his nose looked like a meat chopper chopped it5th I looked for his teeth for I took pride in his teeth he had the most beautiful teeth and smile I looked they were all gone except for two they knocked them all out 6th I look for his ears for they are like mine they curl up at the ends. I looked no ears then I look up I could see light shining through it was not enough they had to shoot him7th an AX was use to chop him in the center of his head separating the face from the head the face.
Mr. Rayners after her examining and acknowledging this is Emmett that will this be a closed casket. She stated “no this will be an open casket I want the world to see what they did to my baby”.
The Funeral was the most emotional for all to attend and view as all walked by the body of a promising young teenager tortured and is now deceased because of the color of his skin. This embroiled the young people angered for they related to this young black man in his teenage years.
Now after the funeral Mrs. Mamie went to the south for the court hearing .The town of Summer in Tallahatchie County served as the venue for the trial as the body had been found there. The town only had one boarding house and it was besieged by reporters from all over the country. David Halbersham called it “the first great media event of the civil rights movement”. A reporter who had covered the trials for Buno Hauptmann and Machine Gun remarked that this was the most publicity for any trial he had ever seen. No boarding houses were available for black visitors. Mamie Till Bradley arrived to testify and the trial also attracted black congressman Charles Diggs from Michigan. Bradley, Diggs, and several black reporters stayed at Howard’s home in Mound Bayou, which, on a large lot surrounded by Howard’s armed guards, resembled a compound. The day before the start of the trial, a young black man named Frank Young arrived to tell Howard he knew of two witnesses to the crime. Levi “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Lee Loggins were black employees of Leslie Milam, J. W.’s brother, in who’s shed Till was beaten. Collins and Loggins were spotted with J. W. Milam, Bryant, and Till. The prosecution team was unaware of Collins and Loggins. Sheriff Strider, however, booked them into the Charleston Mississippi jail to keep them from testifying.
The trial lasted only for five days; and attendees remember the weather being very hot. The courtroom was filled to its 280-spectator capacity, and as a matter of course racially segregated. Press from major national newspapers attended, including black publications; black reporters were made to sit segregated from the white press, farther from the jury. Sheriff Strider welcomed black spectators coming back from lunch with a cheerful, “Hello, Niggers!” Some visitors from the North found the court to be run with surprising informality. Jury members were allowed to drink beer on duty and many white men in the audience wore handguns holstered to their belt In the concluding statements, one prosecuting attorney admitted that what Till did was wrong, but it warranted a spanking, not murder. Gerald Chatham passionately called for justice and mocked the sheriff and doctor’s statements that alluded to a conspiracy. Mamie Bradley indicated she was very impressed with his summation. The defense stated that the prosecution’s theory of the events the night Till was murdered were improbable, and said the jury’s “forefathers would turn over in their graves” if they convicted Bryant and Milam. Only three outcomes were possible in
Mississippi for capital murder: life imprisonment, the death penalty or acquittal.
On September 23 the jury acquitted both defendants after a 67-minute deliberation; one juror said, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.
This was printed in the same year to take off the innocence of EMMETT TILL and to paint him as a rapist and aggressor it did not work and who truly knows if this is true about his father all the years and no report was filed until his son was murdered under this circumstance.. The article appeared In October 1955, the Jackson Daily News reported facts about Till’s father that had been suppressed by the U.S. military. While serving in Italy, Louis Till raped two women and killed a third. He was court-martialed and hanged by the Army near Pisa in July 1945. Mamie Till Bradley and her family knew none of this, having only been told that Louis had been killed for “willful misconduct”. Mississippi senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis probed Army records to uncover Louis Till’s crimes. Although Emmett Till’s murder trial was over, news about his father remained on the front pages of Mississippi newspapers for weeks in October and November 1955, further engaging debate about Emmett Till’s actions and Carolyn Bryant’s integrity. Stephen Whitfield writes that the lack of attention paid to identifying or finding Till is “strange” compared to the amount of published discourse about his father.[ Emmett Till’s urges, to white Mississippians, were genetic instincts violently apparent in Louis Till. According to historians Davis Houck and Matthew Grindy, “Louis Till became a most important rhetorical pawn in the high-stakes game of north versus south, black versus white, NAACP versus White Citizens’ Councils”. Reaction to Huie’s interview with Bryant and Milam was explosive. Their brazen admission that they had slain Till caused prominent civil rights leaders to push the federal government harder to investigate the case. Till’s murder was one of several reasons the Civil Rights Act of 1957was passed; it allowed the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in local law enforcement issues when civil rights were being compromised. Huie’s interview, in which he said that Milam and Bryant had acted alone, overshadowed inconsistencies in earlier versions of the stories. Details about Collins and Loggins and anyone else who had possibly been involved in Till’s abduction, murder, or the clean-up of it, were, according to historians David and Linda Beito, forgotten.
In November 1955, a grand jury declined to indict Bryant and Milam for kidnapping, despite the testimony given that they had admitted taking Till. Mose Wright and a young man named Willie Reed, who testified to seeing Milam enter the shed from which screams and blows were heard, both testified in front of the grand jury. T. R. M. Howard paid to relocate Wright, Reed, and another black witness who testified against Milam and Bryant, to Chicago. Reed, who later changed his name to Willie Louis to avoid being found, continued to live in the Chicago area until his death on July 18, 2013. He avoided publicity and even kept his history secret from his wife until she was told by a relative. Reed began to speak publicly about the case in the PBS documentary in 2003
Protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam struck a deal with Look magazine in 1956 to tell their story to William Bradford Hue for between $3,600 and $4,000. The interview took place in the law firm of the attorneys who had defended Bryant and Milam. Huie did not ask the questions; Bryant and Milam’s own attorneys did. They had never heard the story before either. According to Huie, the older Milam was more articulate and sure of himself than Bryant. Milam admitted to shooting Till and neither of them thought of themselves as guilty or that they had done anything wrong. Following their interview, however, their support base eroded in Mississippi. Blacks refused to shop at their stores, they went bankrupt, and were unable to secure loans from banks to plant crops. They went bankrupt.
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On July 9, 2009, a manager and three laborers at Burr Oak Cemetery were charged with digging up bodies, dumping them in a remote area, and reselling the plots. Till’s grave was not disturbed, but investigators found his original glass-topped casket rusting in a dilapidated storage shed. When Till was reburied in a new casket in 2005, there were plans for an Emmett Till memorial museum, where his original casket would be installed. The cemetery manager, who administered the memorial fund, pocketed donations intended for the memorial. It is unclear how much money was collected. Cemetery officials also neglected the casket, which was discolored, the interior fabric torn, and bore evidence that animals had been living in it, although its glass top was still intact. The Smithsoian’s National Museum of African American History Culture in Washington, D.C. acquired the casket a month later. According to director Lonnie Bunch III, it is an artifact with potential to stop future visitors and make them think.
Through the constant attention it received, the Till case became emblematic of the disparity of justice for blacks in the South. The NAACP asked Mamie Till to tour the country relating the events of her son’s life, death, and the trial of his murderers. It was one of the most successful fundraising campaigns the NAACP had ever known
Till’s mother married Gene Mobley, became a teacher, changed her surname to Till-Mobley, and continued her life as an activist working to educate people about what happened to her son.
In 1976 she obtained a master’s degree in administration at Loyola University Mamie Till-Mobley died of heart failure in 2003, aged 81 at this time also her autobiography written with Christopher Benson Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America was published.
In 1992, Till-Mobley had the opportunity to listen while Bryant was interviewed about his involvement in Till’s murder. With Bryant unaware that Till-Mobley was listening, he asserted that Till had ruined his life, expressed no remorse, and stated “Emmett Till is dead. I don’t know why he can’t just stay dead
Resources,
Mamie autobiography
Smithsonian
American black history.org
MIEmpowerment
WIKI
EB