How Did Emmett Till's Murder Shake the U.S.?

never been to the Deep South. The tragic story of young Till's murder at the hands of white men because he was black became too many a catalyst for the American civil rights movement. But his story did not end in Mississippi. It never really ended. We spoke with Florida State University professor Davis Howe, who helped create the Emmett Till Memory Project, and it's been instrumental in building f

s U S Emmett Till Archive. He said, I'd like to think that if we had the trial again, that number one, we'd have some black jurors and some women, that in fact, justice would be done. That's the optimist in me, But I don't want to be too optimistic, because we're at a time in our country right now where anything goes in terms of violence visited upon young

black boys for whistling at a white woman. Yeah, I think we're pretty far down the road from that, But I don't want to say we've arrived at some ideal place. We haven't. The murder of Emmett Till could have been lost to time, just another of the thousands of lynchings that were perpetuated all over the United States after the Civil War. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than four thousand, four hundred lynchings in twenty states between eighteen

seventy seven and nineteen fifty. Until's murder stands out separately from those, though not because of its sheer violence. Lynchings were, by definition brutal, but because the particular in humanity brought upon him was not automatically relegated to the inside pages of newspapers as many others have been. Even in Mississippi, shortly after his death, news accounts almost immediately condemned the teen's murder. The for her at the state at the time,

Governor Hugh White even spoke out against it. Still, it was not until Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley then Mamie Till Bradley, demanded that her son be returned to Chicago for burial. That the entire world took notice because she held an open casket funeral to show what had happened to him. He was beaten, shot, had a seventy five pound fan tied to his neck with barbed wire, and was then tossed into the Tallahatchee River, where he was

found several days later. Bradley told documentary in Keith Bucamp years later, in retelling the story of the day she saw her son's body returned from Mississippi. Oh, yes, we're going to open the casket. Let the people see what I see. I want the world to see this. More

than a hundred thousand people attended Till's funeral. Jet magazine published graphic photos, including one depicting Bradley standing above the coffin containing her battered son's body, and the outrage grew louder when the two men accused of the murder, Roy Bryant and J. W. Millham, work fitted by an all white jury weeks later. Anyone looking for further reason to put an end to lynching and demand racial justice had a rallying point. What prompted tills kidnapping and murder is

still debated, and in reality, is beside the point. The jurors were told by Bryant's wife, Caroline, the Till had whistled at her, come into the Bryant family store, grabbed her by the wrist, put his hands on her waist, and bragged about being with white women. But it wasn't true. She recanted that story years later. What she told author Timothy Tyson for his seen book The Blood of Emmett Till strikes at the very truth of that night. She said,

nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him. Still, the original retelling of the encounter between fourteen year old Till and twenty one year old Caroline Bryant has had remarkable staying power, despite the fact that it's been disavowed by its creator. Nineteen fifty six Look magazine article by William Bradford Huey, containing a confession from the murderers that Look paid them to give, was purported to tell the

true account of the murder. Halke said that so called confession continues in some to function as a history of what happened to Emmett Till that night. What the article has done. What I see is it divides Mississippi along black and white lines. Oh, Emmett Till was kind of this borderline rapist man child who had a coming to him. You will hear that in Polite Company in Mississippi to

the present day. Till's story had an immediate and profound effect on Americans at the time, both black and white, largely because of his mother's bold decision to display his body and Jet's decision among others, including the Chicago Defender, to publish the pictures. A former politician and activist, Julian Bond, who died, wrote a forward to Devere S Anderson's indispensable look at the events Emmitt Till, the murder that shocked

the world and propelled at the civil rights movement. In it, he wrote, the Till story was a touchstone narrative of my generation. Among many Southern hor stories, this was among the most morbid. The Till death picture was proof of white Southerners malevolence. Their refusal to acknowledge the killer's guilt was proof of their acceptance of evil. Until's story was recounted through the nineteen sixties as a Civil Rights Act

became law. It's still widely cited by activists from Bond to Rosa Parks and beyond, and the story of what happened in Mississippi in August of nineteen may not be finished either. Till's body was exhumed and positively identified as part of a two thousand four Department of Justice reopening

of the case, which resulted in no new charges. A Mississippi grand jury in two thousand seven found no evidence, suggested by documentary and Beaucamp that as many as fourteen people may have taken part in his kidnapping and murder. In eighteen, the Department of Justice again opened up an investigation. It's evidently still pending. Many articles, books, and documentaries have been produced on the story. There's now an Emmett Till

Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi. A few other museums are in the works. The state of Mississippi has several road signs that detail places in the Emmett Till story, though many of the signs continue to be shot and otherwise vandalized. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, dedicated to Black people Terrorized by Lynching opened in twenty eighteen, not far from the Legacy Museum From in Slaveland to mass Incarceration.

Both are projects of the Equal Justice Initiative, and finally, on February twenty six, twenty the United States House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Act four hundred and ten to four to make lynching a federal hate crime. This comes after lawmakers have tried and failed more than two hundred times. The bill still needs to be passed in the U s. Senate and signed by the President to become law. Today's episode was written by

John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit housetoffworks dot com. Brainstuff is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H