Emmitt Till Murder Case

Emmitt Till was a fourteen-year-old boy that went to the meat market one day in late August. He and his family were in Mississippi for summer vacation. He supposedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant, the white woman that owned the store. Emmitt Till was kidnapped, tortured, and shot in the head four days later by Carolyn’s husband and half-brother. His dead body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River three days after being kidnapped. His body naked and tied to a seventy-five-pound cotton gin fan with barbed wire.
Till grew up near Chicago. His parents were working class citizens. He also attended a segregated school. He was not used to the type of segregation he found in Mississippi. Emmitt enjoyed pranking people, his mother knew this so she told him that in the south he had to be careful

and stay in line. Being a young teenage boy, he did not listen. Unfortunately, it ended up getting him killed. Emmitt was standing outside of the meat market talking about his association with white people at home. His friends did not believe him, so they dared him to prove it. He walked into the empty store and bought some candy. As he walked out he insinuated in words that he would see the owner later. To his friends, it sounded like he had flirted with the white woman and succeeded in his dare. There was no one in the store to see what had happened in the store, Carolyn claimed that he had sexually harassed her, physically and mentally. Since she was white and he was black, her word was believed over his.
When Carolyn’s husband came home and heard about the situation he went looking for revenge. They showed up to Emmitt’s uncle’s house and forced Emmitt into their car in the early hours of the morning. Throughout this day, the men drove around Memphis and beat Emmitt. Then late during the night, they took Emmitt to the Tallahatchie River.
Three days after being kidnapped, Emmitt’s uncle could barely recognize Emmitt’s beaten and disfigured body.

Emmitt’s mother insisted on a public display of his remains, which was against the wishes of the police dealing with Emmitt’s case. His body was shipped back to Chicago, where there was an open casket funeral held for him. Many pictures were taken and articles written on this horrid murder.
Not even two weeks after Emmit’s burial, the two men responsible were put on trial. There were not very many witnesses outside of Emmitt’s uncle that could identify these men as Emmitt’s murderers. They were tried in a segregated courthouse with an all white jury that took only an hour to decide that these men were not guilty. The men that murdered and kidnapped Emmitt Till walked away freely. People all over the country were outraged about this great injustice.
A few weeks after being charged as not guilty, the two men admitted to killing Emmitt Till in a newspaper article. The case was already over and closed, though, so they got to walk away with no charges. This was a great injustice that helped show the horridness of the Jim Crow segregation in the southern states of our

country.