Mamie Till
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Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, the white men who killed Emmett Till, were arrested on August 29, 1955. They stood trial for Till’s murder in September of that year. The all-white, all-male jury deliberated for about an hour before acquitting Bryant and Milam of all charges.
Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African American teenager who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of ...
- Overview
- Who was Emmett Till and what happened to him?
- What happened to Emmett Till’s killers?
- How did Emmett Till’s murder catalyze the civil rights movement?
- What is Till’s legacy today?
A new film, Till, documents the decades-long pursuit of justice for the 14-year-old, whose 1955 killing galvanized a generation of activists.
This picture of 14-year-old Emmett Till with his mother at their home in Chicago was taken shortly before his trip to visit family in Mississippi, where he was murdered.
On August 31, 1955, the mutilated body of 14-year-old Emmett Till was found floating in the Tallahatchie River.
Beaten and murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman, the teen was one of many Black men, women, and children who were lynched without recourse in the century after the Civil War. Till’s story woke the nation up to the violent reality of being Black in America.
His legacy endures today—thanks in part to his mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till, who showed the world the brutality of her son’s murder and fought tirelessly for justice. Although Emmett’s killers were never convicted, his name and face are still evoked in the ongoing struggle for equality. Their story is told in the new film Till.
This is how Emmett Till’s murder, and his fearless mother, helped ignite the American civil rights movement.
Emmett “Bobo” Louis Till was just 14 years old when he was murdered. Family remember him as a fun loving, gentle person who loved practical jokes and making others laugh.
But Till grew up in a time when most public spaces were segregated and marriage between races was illegal. Black people were taught to speak to white people with their eyes turned to the ground and to address them with honorifics. Violations were often answered with beatings and other uses of force.
Raised in Chicago, Till was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1955. On the evening of August 24, Till went with some cousins to the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi.
(What were Jim Crow laws?)
Carolyn Bryant Donham, the store owner’s wife, was tending the store that evening. Despite Bryant Donham’s later claims that Till repeatedly grabbed and harassed her in the store, court documents show Till paid two cents for bubble gum and left without incident. When Bryant Donham left the store, Till whistled—his cousins say it wasn’t directed at her, but knew this would cause trouble and drove away.
Over the next three days, Bryant Donham’s husband Roy terrorized two other Black teenagers mistaken for Till: one in the Bryant store, and another walking in the road, who was thrown in the back of Bryant’s van before he was released.
In September 1955, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant were tried for murder before a jury of all white men in a Tallahatchie County court. A Black teen named Willy Reed risked his life to testify that he saw the men drive Till to a farm where Reed heard them beat Till mercilessly in the barn.
The jury acquitted Milam and Bryant after deliberating for only 67 minutes. One juror told a reporter they wouldn’t have taken so long if they hadn’t “stopped to drink pop.” In November, the brothers also escaped kidnapping charges.
The men later confessed in a story they sold to Look magazine that they took Till to the Tallahatchie River, where they shot him in the head and pushed his body into the water.
No one else was ever indicted or prosecuted for involvement in Till’s kidnapping or murder.
When Mamie Till learned her son was kidnapped, she gathered her family and called up newspapers the same day. By the next morning, she had gotten the NAACP and local and state politicians involved. This early publicity proved critical.
Her son’s casket arrived in Chicago locked with the seal of the state of Mississippi, but Mamie Till fought for the undertaker to open it. Once she saw her son, she made a monumental decision to have an open casket funeral. She famously told the funeral director: “Let the people see what I’ve seen.”
(Who was Medgar Evers?)
Tens of thousands of people came to see Emmett Till’s body. Jet magazine photographer David Jackson was among them, taking the photo of Till in his coffin that brought America face-to-face with the murder. Jackson, along with journalists Simeon Booker from Jet and Moses Newson of the Tri-State Defender, made the case national news.
Till’s horrific murder inspired what was later dubbed the “Emmett Till Generation” of Southern Black youth who joined meetings, sit-ins, and marches to demand their equal treatment under the law.
It also inspired the leaders of the movement. One hundred days after Till’s murder, Rosa Parks sat in the front of a Montgomery bus and refused to get up as it filled with white passengers, violating Alabama’s bus segregation laws. Reverend Jesse Jackson said in 1988 that Rosa “thought about going to the back of the bus. But then she thought about Emmett Till and she couldn’t do it.”
David Jackson’s powerful photograph of Emmett Till’s disfigured body continues to resonate: It has been linked with videos of Rodney King’s beating in 1991, Philando Castile’s fatal shooting at a traffic stop in 2016, George Floyd’s murder in 2020, and countless other racial injustices that have occurred in the decades since Till’s murder.
The racism that led to Till’s killing is still very much alive today, as hate groups have more than doubled in the last two decades.The memorial sign that marks where Till’s body was pulled from the river was riddled with bullet holes and had to be replaced with one covered in bullet proof glass.
(The struggle for voting rights continue decades after the March on Washington.)
Today, there’s still a push to bring charges against Carolyn Bryant Donham, one of the last living people connected to the case. In 2017, Duke University historian Timothy B. Tyson released a book in which Bryant Donham allegedly admitted lying about her interaction in the store with Till. But in December 2021, the Department of Justice announced it closed its investigation after it was unable to confirm that she had recanted her statement. In August 2022, a Mississippi grand jury also declined to indict Bryant Donham, now in her 80s.
- Allie Yang
Dec 2, 2009 · Emmett Till, a 14-year old Black youth, was murdered in August 1955 in a racist attack that shocked the nation and provided a catalyst for the emerging civil rights movement. A Chicago native,...
Jul 25, 2023 · What happened to Emmett's killers? Emmett's death and an all-white jury's dismissal of charges against two white men who later confessed to his killing drew national attention to the atrocities and violence that African Americans faced in the US.
Sep 25, 2015 · It was 60 years ago this week that an all-white jury acquitted two white men in the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy visiting Mississippi from Chicago. The case shocked the...
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Apr 27, 2023 · Here is a look at who he was, the outrage at his murder and the acquittal of his killers, and how he has shaped the civil rights movement in America. Emmett Till was 14 in 1955, when he was...
