Emmett Till: The Civil Rights Movement

“We must impress upon our children that even when troubles rise to seven-point-one on life’s Richter scale, they must be anchored so deeply that, though they sway, they will not topple.” This quote was spoken by Mamie Till, the mother of a boy that was murdered after whistling at a white woman. Emmett Till, a Chicago native, was known kind and resourceful amongst his family and friends. He was brutally murdered by two white men when he was visiting his uncle and cousin in New Orleans. The murderers admitted to the kidnapping and during the trial, they were convicted not-guilty. After this, the two men were exonerated of their heinous crime. His story and murder was one of the leading factors of the Civil Rights Movement.

Emmett Till was born into the loving arms of Mamie Till and her mother. Before his birth, Emmett’s father, Louis Till, was deployed to Italy. Emmett was born on July 25th, 1941. His mother worked several jobs and was hardly home. Young Emmett helped his grandmother and mother keep the house clean. He was raised mostly by his grandmother. Mamie described him as an adventurous and independent-minded child. Even after contracting polio at the age of six, he never stopped his love for exploration.

In 1945, Louis Till died of unknown circumstances. Only a few things were sent home to the Till family. The items included a ring

of Louis Till, that had his initials inscribed in it. Emmett quickly grasped this ring and always had his father’s ring on him. As he grew up, his spectacular personality attracted many people.
Through the years, Emmett received the nickname, Bo. He attended McCosh Elementary School and was described as a responsible, funny, and an infectiously high-spirited child. The young Emmett, was very social and had many friends, despite his weight problems. Emmett enjoyed playing good-hearted pranks on family and friends. Furthermore, Emmett loved to cook and his favorite dish to cook was porkchops and corn. His mother called him meticulous. This young man was proud of his appearance and had more confidence than many people.
Emmett grew up in the working-class of Chicago. He was very curious and loved finding new ways to do tasks. His mother noted once that he had figured how to steam his clothes on his radiator. According to his family, Emmett told his aunt that he wanted to be a baseball player and even told his mom that he wanted to be a motorcycle policeman. Despite his age, he dreamed about the future and loved having fun. On his spare time he even loved to sing and dance with friends and family. The group of friends like to play on 36th street in Chicago. Then, in the summer of 1955, he wanted to go to Mississippi.
His mother had warned him about the difference of Mississippi to Chicago, but, Emmett, optimistic as usual, didn’t listen to his mom and insisted on going to visiting his uncle and cousins. After arriving in Money, Mississippi, Emmett and his cousins spent many days playing and picking cotton on his uncle’s farm. One day, the boys were hot and tired, so they stopped at the Bryant’s Meat and Grocery Store. The group had purchased beverages and Emmett bought a pack of bubblegum. Carolyn Bryant, the owner’s wife, was working the cash register and rang up their purchases. Emmett stayed behind and his cousins said that they heard him whistle like a dog when leaving the establishment. After boys left, Carolyn dialed her husband.
Four nights later, Emmett was ripped from his bed and kidnapped by Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, and J.W. Milam, Roy’s half-brother. They forced Emmet into a car and drove off. The two men beat Emmett Till to the point of unrecognizability. These two men gouged out his left eye, shot him in the head, put an axe through his head, and ripped off of his ears. Emmett’s body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River, which is fifteen miles upstream from Money. His body was weighed down with a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan. Three days later, a young fisherman found the body.
Emmett’s body was beyond recognition. Many images surfaced of him cap-sized body. The fourteen-year-old boys looked like an eighty-year-old man. After many false identifications, he was eventually identified by his father’s ring. When Mamie Till heard her son’s body was found, she insisted that the body was shipped back to Chicago for an open burial. She was the person who opened his casket when he first arrived back in his hometown.
On September 6th, 1955, the funeral was held. Many of Emmett’s close family members offered the idea of a cremation or a closed-casket but Mamie insisted on having an open-casket service. At Emmett Till’s funeral, thousands of people from across the country attended. All Mamie had to say at the funeral was, “See what they have done to my boy,” and, “let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I can describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it is like.”
The funeral lasted five days and within the first four days as many as one-hundred
thousand people passed his glass-enclosed casket. There was a ceremony at Robert’s Temple Church of God in Christ and it was packed with two-thousand people to begin with and five-thousand outside, waiting to get in. Emmett Till, at the age of fourteen, was laid to rest at Burr Oak Cemetery. The trial was held seven days later.
The trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam’s trial began on September 19th, 1955. The trial was held in Sumner, Mississippi. There was five active lawyers practicing in Sumner and all of them chose the defendants side. Throughout the stages of the trial, the country screamed with outrage. This trial lasted five days and the jury only spent only a brief sixty-eight minutes discussing the outcome of this murder. Bryant and Milam were found not-guilt, by the white jury and judge. Though the verdict was final, the country was livid.
After the verdict regarding Emmett Till’s murder surfaced, the country started rioting. There was riots in all of the major cities in the U.S. and one was even recorded in Paris, France. The death of this young boy infuriated the world. A picture of Emmett’s body was on the front cover of multiple magazines. Among these magazines, the two best-selling were Jet Magazine and the Chicago Defender. All of the magazines and newspapers saw this murder as an unrightful act of racism and a true example of segregation in the states.
Afterwards, the two men sold their stories for four-thousand dollars. They sold their stories to multiple magazines, giving gruesome details of the kidnapping and murder. These men flat-out admitted to killing Till. Milam and Bryant stated that they killed Emmett as an example to warn others. These stories solidified their guilt in public minds. Six decades after the young boy’s death, Carolyn Bryant finally admitted that Till never made advances to her in the first place. She sold her story to Vanity Fair Magazine. Many African Americans attended his funeral used this as a rallying cry. Large number of people joined the Civil Rights Movement to ensure there were to be no more Emmett Tills.
Emmett Till’s death catalyzed many actions in the U.S. Exactly one-hundred days after his death, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery. Rosa told press, “I thought about Emmett Till and I couldn’t go to the back of the bus.” Nine years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in 1965, they passed the Voting Rights Act, desegregating polls.
“Emmett Till’s murder was one of the most brutal and inhumane crimes of the twentieth century,” spoke Martin Luther King Jr. Emmett Till’s murder affected many people and even moved some. There is even a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmett in Colorado. The impact of this murder wasn’t just short-term, but long term. This is displayed by the fact that on July 25th, 1991, there was a Emmett Till Road dedication in Chicago and Rosa Parks attended this. Bryant’s Meat and Grocery Store went out of business due to ninety-percent of their customers were African Americans, so they boycotted. In 2004, the case was reopened by the U.S. Justice Department but, no charges were ever filed. Said by Mamie Till in Dervey Anderson’s book, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement, “People really don’t know that things this horrible could take place.”
Emmett Till’s death had shook the world at its core.

This escalated to riots and even the spark of the Civil Rights Movement. Growing up in the working-class of Chicago and murdered in Money, Mississippi for being falsely accused of whistling at Carolyn Bryant. The two men who kidnapped him and beat him to unrecognizability walked away unharmed. Even after the rallying cries and the riots, the government still did nothing. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. even had a say about the circumstances of this young death. Just as Simeon Wright said, “J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant died with Emmett Till’s young-blood on their

hands.”