On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, launching the Montgomery bus boycott that is thought to be the start of the civil rights movement. Her fellow activist Reverend Jesse Jackson told Vanity Fair that when he asked Parks (in 1988) why she did what she did, “she said she thought about going to the back of the bus. But then she thought about Emmett Till and she couldn’t do it.”
A few months prior, Emmett, a 14-year-old black boy, was murdered in Mississippi by two white men. Emmett was accused of whistling and making advances at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a store. The men who killed Emmett were acquitted by an all-white jury of the murder, causing an uproar around the country; Emmett's death is now seen as one of the key moments in the civil rights movement.
Now some of Emmett's family members are calling for his murder investigation to be reopened after learning Carolyn, a key witness in his case, reportedly lied in her court testimony, according to the Associated Press (AP). Though the murderers confessed after being acquitted, the AP reports that Emmett's family says reopening the case could potentially answer some remaining questions — primarily, whether a third person was with the two killers the night Emmett died.
In 2007, at 72 years old, Carolyn (now Carolyn Bryant Donham) spoke with writer Timothy B. Tyson for his new book, The Blood of Emmett Till, which was published just last month. According to Vanity Fair, she confessed to the author that statements she made on the stand in 1955 regarding Emmett’s alleged verbal and physical advances toward her were lies. “That part’s not true,” she told Tyson. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she said, also noting she “felt tender sorrow” for Emmett’s late mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
Now Emmett’s cousins Wheeler Parker and Deborah Watts want authorities to further investigate the case to potentially “bring more truth” to the circumstances surrounding the boy’s murder. “We know that [Carolyn] has admitted that she lied, and we know that is part of the reason Emmett is no longer with us,” Deborah told the AP. “If there is any chance to reopen the case, I hope they will take this opportunity to do it now.”
Here’s what you need to know about his murder.
Emmett Till was murdered while visiting family in Mississippi. In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett — who was born and grew up in Chicago — went down to Mississippi with his cousin Wheeler to visit relatives and stay with their great uncle Moses Wright. On August 24, 1955, Emmett went to a grocery store in town to buy bubble gum and allegedly whistled at the white woman working there, Carolyn Bryant. Four days later, Carolyn's husband, Roy Bryant, and brother-in-law J.W. Milam kidnapped Emmett from his great uncle’s home. The men brutally beat Emmett, shot him in the head, attached a metal fan to his neck with barbed wire, and disposed of his mutilated body in the Tallahatchie River, where it was found three days later.
Roy and J.W. were arrested and put on trial for the crime. During the trial, Emmett’s great uncle Moses testified that the two men were indeed the ones who had abducted Emmett the evening of the murder. An 18-year-old sharecropper, Willie Reed, also testified that he heard beatings and screaming coming from the Milam family shed, and Emmett’s mother, Mamie, testified that the body pulled out of the river was Emmett’s. Carolyn also testified during the trial, stating that while in the store, Emmett had grabbed and verbally threatened her. In her testimony, according to court documents, Carolyn said Emmett used a word she couldn’t repeat in court (defense lawyers asked her if it was “unprintable,” to which she replied, "yes.") when telling her he had done something “with white women before.” Though Carolyn didn’t testify in front of the jury (the judge deemed her statements not relevant to the actual murder trial and thus dismissed the jury), the judge and spectators in the court heard her testimony, the defendant’s lawyers shared her allegations with reporters, and her statements were put on record so the defense could use them in a possible appeal. On September 23, the all-white, all-male jury acquitted both Roy and J.W. of the murder after just 67 minutes of deliberation.
Roy and J.W. confessed to murdering Emmett after the trial was over. A few months after the the acquittal, Look magazine published an article, "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,” in which both men admitted to the murder to the reporter. Though they claimed their intention was to “just whip [Emmett]...and scare some sense into him,” J.W. said in the interview that they weren’t successful in scaring him. “Well, what else could we do?” J.W. said. “He was hopeless. I’m no bully; I never hurt a n***** in my life. I like n*****s — in their place — I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, n*****s are gonna stay in their place."
Despite the confession, the two men couldn’t be tried again because they’d already been tried for the murder and acquitted. However, there are exceptions to this, such as a state versus federal crime.
Emmett’s murder and the aftermath were catalysts for the civil rights movement. After Emmett’s body was found and before the trial, his mother, Mamie, insisted her son’s deformed and mutilated body be returned to Chicago and that it be on display in an open casket during his funeral, she later told filmmaker Keith Beauchamp in the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. “I said I want the world to see this because there is no way I could tell this story and give them the visual picture of what my son looked like,” she said in the documentary. Following Emmett’s funeral, Jet magazine published an image of his body in the coffin. That image, as well as the trial and the killers’ confession, sparked outrage around the nation.
“What was done to Emmett Till was a crime against humanity,” Paul Johnson, a codirector of the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University, told the AP. “It really shocked the conscience of the world, the sheer brutality.”
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