America came face to face with racist brutality in 1955 with the ignominious murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth.
Till was an outgoing, talkative, handsome young man, naïve about racist hatred in the South, who traveled from his home in Chicago to visit relatives in rural Mississippi.
On Aug. 24, 1955, according to the story at the time, Till flirted with Carolyn Bryant, an attractive white woman in her early 20s who, along with her husband, Roy, owned and operated a small grocery store in the tiny village of Money.
Enraged, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, abducted Till in the middle of the night at gunpoint from the home of Till's great-uncle and took him by pickup truck to nearby Glendora.
Three days later, Till's body, weighted by a cotton gin fan tied with barbed wire around the boy's neck, was found in the Tallahatchie River.
The body had broken bones, missing teeth, a missing eye, hatchet marks on the nose, a cleaved skull, and a bullet hole through his head. His face was so mutilated that the only recognizable characteristic was a distinctive ring on his finger, given to the boy by his father.
Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted that her son's body be returned to Chicago and shown, with an open casket, at a public funeral.
Thousands viewed the boy's face; some fainted. In addition, the Chicago Defender newspaper and Jet magazine published photographs of Till's battered face.
This funeral, now considered as "the start of the Civil Rights Movement," occurred 93 years after the end of the Civil War and 92 years after the Emancipation Proclamation that officially freed Negroes from slavery but did not end racist brutality.
Of Mamie Till Mobley's decision about her son's funeral, civil right activist Al Sharpton said, "She was able to bring home what a thousand speeches couldn't."
In Sumner, Mississippi, local attorneys defended Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam pro bono, extolling them as former US soldiers. They presented Carolyn Bryant as a former beauty queen. Townspeople donated $10,000 for their defense.
The documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which includes news film from the time, shows that the trial was a circus. In the courtroom, Bryant's two sons, not wearing shirts, sat on their father's lap, one of them waving a toy gun. Some news photos show Bryant, with long shirt sleeves rolled up his forearms, smoking a cigarette.
While whites were allowed to sit on courtroom benches, blacks had to stand against a wall. Reporters, especially those from the North, were relegated to a small, crowded card table in a corner.
The all-white jury reached a "not guilty" verdict in just one hour and seven minutes, a decision that outraged the nation.
In 2004, on the CBS News' 60 Minutes story "Justice, Abated But Not Denied," correspondent Ed Bradley reported, "One juror said it wouldn't have taken that long, but they stopped to take a soda break to 'make it look good.'"
Soon thereafter, Bryant and Milam sold their confession to Look magazine for $4,000; it was published on January 24, 1956.
Today, the cotton gin in Glendora from which the drying fan was taken and tied to Till's neck is a museum called the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC). The next door home, formerly owned by J. W. Milan, where the murder took place, is also part of the museum property.
At the same time, more than 40 fresh bullet holes puncture the historical marker that stands on the Tallahatchie shore near where Till's body was found.
As heinous as Till's murder was, the tragic irony is that it didn't need to happen.
In February 2017, Vanity Fair published an article in which Carolyn Bryant, now Carolyn Bryant Donham and in her 80s, revealed that Till did not flirt with her, touch her, or wolf-whistle at her; rather that she fabricated the story to get more attention from her husband.
She has reportedly written a memoir with the stipulation that it not be published until 2036 or after she dies.
From the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till
"The easiest thing would have been to have said, 'Close the casket. I can't bear it.' But she [Mamie Till Mobley] somewhere found the strength to say, 'I'll bear my pain to save some other mother to have to go through this. And because she put the picture of this young man's body on the conscious of America, she might have saved thousands of young black men's and young black women's lives."
--The Rev. Dr. Al Sharpton, civil rights activist
"I believe the whole United States is mourning with me. And if the death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world, then, for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died."
--Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley
Next blog: "Racist murder: Medgar Evers"
