Emmett Till, 14, Murdered in Mississippi
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago, was kidnapped and brutally murdered on this day for allegedly whistling at a white woman in the town of Money, Mississippi. He was visiting members of his family in Mississippi at the time.
The brutal murder became a national cause célèbre in the mid-1950s over the issue of Southern racism. Till’s mother insisted on an open casket at the funeral so that people could see his face, and photographs of his brutally disfigured face created an international sensation. The alleged murderers were acquitted at trial.
In 2004, the U.S. Department of Justice reopened an investigation of the case to determine if any other people besides those originally acquitted had been involved in the murder.
In January 2017, the author of a forthcoming book on the Till murder revealed that Carolyn Bryant, who had been the key witness in the trial of the murderers, admitted to him that she had lied at the trial about Till grabbing her. This recanting of her testimony, however, was not on author Timothy Tyson’s tape recorder. On July 12, 2018, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it was again reopening the Till case based on new evidence. No new trial resulted, however.
Read the latest book: Dave Tell, Remembering Emmett Till (2019)
Read: Timothy B. Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (2017)
Read about the famous case: Stephen J. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (1991)
Learn about President Eisenhower’s response to the Till Murder at the Eisenhower Presidential Library: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/civil_rights_emmett_till_case.html
Watch a documentary on Emmett Till’s murder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-X4is9jMYk
Learn more about the trial of his murderers: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/till/tillhome.html
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here