4th-Emmett+Till



Emmett Till was born an only child to Mamie Carthan and Louis Till, on July 25, 1941 in Chicago. His father Louis Till, who was drafted into the army in 1942 was executed on grounds of 'willful misconduct' in 1945. She was not given the full report of her husband's death.At the age of 6 Emmett was diagnosed with polio,which left him with a minor speech defect.He also had special shoes to support his weakened ankles.However Emmett grew up to be a healthy teenager.Since he was an only child he shared a special relationship with his mother.



**The Death** On Aug. 27, 1955, Emmett was beaten and shot to death by two white men who threw the boy's mutilated body into the Tallahatchie River near Money, Mississippi. Emmett's crime? Talking and maybe whistling to a white woman at a local grocery store.

In the summer of 1955, Mamie Till gave in to her 14 year old son's pleas to visit relatives in the South. But before putting her only son Emmett on bus in Chicago, she gave him a stern warning.Emmett didnt listen to his mothers warning.Emmett and his cousin ,Curtis Jones, were playing with other boys outside the store. Emmett pulled a picture of a white girl out of his wallet and boasted to the other boys that she was his girlfriend. The other boys seemed to think it was just bragging by a city boy from the North. But one boy suggested to Emmett go inside the store and talk to the white woman who was running the cash register,since it was said he was so good with white women.By some accounts he whistled at Carolyn Bryant;Others said he bought some gum and made a lewd suggestion to Bryant on the way out.When Bryant testified that Emmett grabbed her and said, "Don't be afraid of me, baby. I been with white girls before."

Word got around, Emmett was suggested to get out of town as fast as possible..he didnt get out fast enough. Ron Bryant,Carolyn Bryant's husband, and J.W. Milam,brother-in-law,tracked Emmett down and pulled him from his uncle's house. They beat him but Emmett wasnt giving up. So, they decided to kill Emmett to make an example of him. They took him to the river and made him strip down naked. "You still better than me?" Milam asked Emmett. "Yeah," Emmett said. Milam shot him in the head. They tied Emmett's body to a cotton gin fan and dumped it into the river.

When found his body was badly decomposed.Emmett had been in the water for several days,his face was beyond recognition and a bullet in his forhead.Mamie Till spoke out about her son's death. She held an open-casket funeral for her son, so that the world could see "what they did to my boy." Over 50,000 people attended the funeral and were all stunned at what mankind had done to another.

** During the trial Ron Bryan and J.W. Milam were found not guilty by a jury of 14 white men.
 * The Trial

The truth of what happened that night became public knowledge several months after the trial. William Bradford Huie, an Alabama journalist offered Bryant and Milam money to tell their story. Since the two could no longer be prosecuted for a crime of which they had already been found not guilty, they gladly told for a fee of how they had beaten and killed young Till. Huie reported what the killers told him in the 24 January 1956 issue of //Look// magazine. Now publicly exposed as murderers, Bryant and Milam were shunned by the community, and both moved elsewhere within a year. Emmett Till in death became a symbol of the racial hatred African-Americans had yet to overcome.

**The song dedicated to "The Death of Emmett Till"** by Bob Dylan

[]

media type="custom" key="5460963"