The Murder of 14-Year-Old Emmett Till

Before Emmett Till’s mom sent him to Mississippi to visit family, she explained that things were different for Black boys in the South. They weren’t as friendly to people like him, a 14-year-old teen prankster who was always joking around. Mamie warned her son to be careful and he promised that he would.

Emmett arrived at his uncle’s home from Chicago on August 21. He was helping out around the farm during his stay, waking early each day to start the work.

A Walk to the Store

On August 24, 1955, in Money, Mississippi Emmett and two of his cousins walked up to Bryant's Market. Roy and Carolyn Bryant, a white couple, owned the market.

As the boys walked to the store, Emmett told his cousins he had a white girlfriend in Chicago. The boys did not believe Emmett and dared him to ask the lady in the store out on a date.

Emmett went into the store by himself. No one knows exactly what transpired inside. Some say Emmett flirted with Carolyn Bryant; Carolyn had a much different account of events.

Roy & J.W. Outraged by Carolyn’s Words

Four days later on August 28 when Roy and her brother, J.W. Milam, returned from a business trip, she told them Emmett grabbed her, made lewd advances toward her, and wolf-whistled at her.

Outraged that a Black boy would dare talk to a white woman like that, Roy and J.W. drove to the home of Moses Wright, Emmett’s uncle. Despite his pleas, the men took Emmett at gunpoint from the home. They put Emmett in the car, drove around most of the night of August 28, beat him behind a toolhouse and then early the following morning, drove him to the Tallahatchie River.

Once at the banks of the river, the men shot Emmett in the head. The men then tied his body to a large metal fan with barbed wire, then dumped his dead body into the river.

Emmett’s Body Recovered

Emmett’s badly disfigured corpse was recovered from the lake three days later. Moses identified his body by his initial ring. Authorities wanted to immediately bury Emmett, but Mamie Bradley insisted it was sent back to Chicago.

Open Casket Funeral

Mamie decided on an open-casket funeral for Emmett because she wanted the world to see what two racist men had done to her son. Hundreds of people gathered to pay their final respects to Emmett.

JET magazine published a photo of Emmett’s corpse and mainstream media eventually picked up on the story.

Bryant & Milam “Not Guilty”

Roy and J.W. went on trial two weeks later in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. Moses Wright was the only witness in the case. On the stand, Wright identified Roy and J.W. as the two men who kidnapped Emmett from his home on August 28.

On September 23, the all-white jury delivered a “not guilty” verdict in the case, stating the state failed to prove the identity of the body. It took the jury less than one hour to deliver the verdict. The state decided not to indict Bryant on charges of kidnapping.

Carolyn Bryant Recants Her Statements

In 2017, Tim Tyson, author of the book The Blood of Emmett Till, revealed that Carolyn Bryant recanted her testimony. Emmett had never touched, harassed, or threatened her. She went on to say, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.”