Emmitt Till Case Reopened

The Death of Emmitt Till - Bob Dylan

"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.

And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.

If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.




Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider

here i sit, wishing some intelligent reply to come flowing forth. But none shows it's face...

a note:
I was in my courtroom earlier this week and the Judge mentioned if anyone knew who Emmett Till was. I knew, my partner (also a black woman) sitting next to me knew. Everyone else in the courtroom had a look ... of complete ignorance (not negatively so, just a look of unknowing). I was very...very...let down. But I don't imagine, in retrospect, that I should be.
________________________

Is it justice after so long a time? According to a documentary I saw, nearly everyone that was suspected of being 'involved' is now gone....so I continue to wonder....what is the point? In digging up a long dead body don't they just dig up long buried hurts and anguishes? Am I missing the point in this?

I believe the story needs to be told in its entirety. Just because most of those involved are dead or very old is no excuse to let them off the hook.

I remember the year Emmitt was killed - My grade school teacher (in Fresno, California) told us the story and then played a record of a song that told the story. I want very much to see the blame placed in a legal way on the perpetrators.

*click* the light comes on..

so indeed i was missing the point.

thank you E. You're always so enlightening. (i sneak read your posts w/o much comment ) * smile*

onyxelle
It is always a pleasure to see you on the boards.

Edgar, Keith Beauchamp was interviewed this morning on Air America. Quite a good interview.

Sorry I missed it.

I heard the story on the proposed exhumation on NPR's Morning Edition this morning. My understanding is that , because Emmett Till was black and because this was Mississippi in the 1950s, no autopsy was ever performed on the corpse. The cause of death seemed too obvious to bother with such niceties. The investigators hope to get a better insight on causes of death, as well as new evidence that can be entered into the record. As you said, Edgar, just because the prime suspects are dead is no reason not to expunge the record and lay blame where it is due. As of right now, the memory of those murderers is pure because they were exonerated by an all-white jury. Additional evidence could change that.

Thanks for starting the thread, edgar. I hadn't heard about all this.

I'm not sure that exhuming the poor boy's body will actually help progress toward finding his tormentors, but I feel strongly that Emmett Till's story should not be forgotten.

This is a story in bad need of closure.

The law dictates that if there is an investigation an autopsy is mandatory.

That's the reason they're exhuming the body, not for forensic evidence -- strictly a formality.

Till
I have heard about this murder all my life ...since I grew up in the MS delta. I understand that they would like to know more about this case. Both men who murdered this young man, and admitted to it after they were acquitted, are dead now. The woman, who was whistled at by Till, divorced Milam, remarried and is living in MS. I am not sure what they are looking for in this case. Both admitted to killing Till and told how, of course after the trial. What could be done now? I am not sure.

Background for:

Emmett Till
Born: 25-Jul-1941
Birthplace: Chicago, IL
Died: 28-Aug-1955
Location of death: Money, MS
Cause of death: Murder
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Black
Executive summary: Black boy murdered brutally in Mississippi



Emmett Till, a black boy from a Chicago, was visiting his grandfather and grand-uncle Mose Wright in the town of Money, Mississippi, population about 360. Although warned by his mother not to talk to whites, he disregarded that warning, saying "Bye, baby" to Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working at Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market. Till and his cousin, Curtis Jones, were told to leave town. They did not. One week later, J. W. Milam and his half-brother Roy Bryant arrived at Wright's house, and abducted the "nigger here from Chicago." They beat him to death, gouging out one of his eyes, and dumped his weighted body into the Tallahatchee River. An all-white jury found the two not guilty. Emmett's mother, Mamie, insisted on an open-casket funeral where his beaten, pulpy face was visible to the public, hoping her child did not die in vain.

Father: Louis Till (d. 1945 execution for murder, in Italy)
Mother: Mamie Till-Mobley (b. 1921, d. 2003)

High School: McCosh School, Chicago, IL

Risk Factors: Polio

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Relatives Saturday reburied Emmett Till, the black teenager lynched in Mississippi 50 years ago, following an autopsy that might yield clues to an unsolved murder that helped spark the U.S. civil rights movement.

The burial took place at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, about 25 miles from Chicago, a spokesman for the cemetery said.

The FBI exhumed Till's body Wednesday in a bid to shed light on a crime that symbolized the raw history of race relations in America.

Autopsy results were sent from the Cook County Medical Examiner in Illinois to prosecutors in Greenville, Mississippi, where charges could be brought.

Simeon Wright, a cousin of Till's who was there when the youth was dragged from his bed, said the FBI has not discussed the autopsy results with him.

But officials have said "I'll be very pleased," he added.

The Justice Department announced a year ago it was reopening the case. The federal statute of limitations has expired, but information gleaned from the probe could lead to state charges.

In reviewing the case, the FBI determined that no autopsy had been performed.

Till was 14 and living in Chicago in the summer of 1955 when he visited relatives in Mississippi, then the heart of the segregated American South. He allegedly whistled at and talked to a white woman in a store, for which he was kidnapped and killed.

Victim's open casket
His battered body turned up in the Tallahatchie River near Money, Mississippi, weighed down by a cotton gin fan tied with barbed wire to his neck. He appeared to have been tortured and shot.

Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, ordered his disfigured face displayed in an open coffin in Chicago. It was viewed by tens of thousands of people and photographs brought the horrors of lynchings to millions.

Two white men, one of them married to the woman with whom Till was said to have whistled at, were charged with his killing and acquitted by an all-white Mississippi jury.

The men later described in a magazine interview how they had beaten Till. But the two could not be tried again because they had been acquitted. Both are now dead.

Lawmakers, family members and civil rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had urged the Justice Department to reopen the case.

A new documentary film, "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till," has turned up witnesses to the crime that indicate others were involved in his abduction and torture.

The director, Keith Beauchamp, said he thinks as many as 14 people, including five blacks, played a role.

"There is forensic evidence that we believe would bring others to justice," said Beauchamp, speaking after a screening of his film in New York

I hope things have changed after all these years. Hopefully, people's attitudes have become much more enlightened.

Interesting case, Edger. Thanks for re-opening.

In many respects, people are much more enlightened than in the recent past, but the root causes have not been stemmed. No matter how far we appear to have advanced, it is just a slight regression to be once again in the middle of it.

Report: DNA confirms body is Emmett Till's

By Laura Parker, USA TODAY

DNA testing has confirmed that the body buried in Emmett Till's grave is the 14-year-old who was slain in Mississippi a half-century ago, just as his mother and relatives have said these long years, the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger reported Thursday.

Emmett Till was killed Aug. 28, 1955, several days after he whistled at a white woman.
AP file

The results come as Till's relatives plan to mark the 50th anniversary of the murder that galvanized the civil rights movement by laying a wreath at Till's grave on Sunday.

Till's body was exhumed from a suburban Chicago cemetery on June 1 as one of the last tasks in a federal investigation of his death. The probe was renewed last year after a New York filmmaker suggested there were other participants in the murder who have never been charged.

The Till case is one of several high-profile civil rights cases that have been reopened in recent years. It also helped spur a bill in Congress that would establish a "cold case" unit in the Justice Department to investigate old civil rights cases.

"If we're not willing to look back into the past to find out the truth about what happened, we really can't move into the future with any hope for healing," said Sen. James Talent, R-Mo., one of the bill's authors. Talent said Thursday that he hopes the Senate will approve $5 million to launch the unit.

Since 1989, authorities in seven states have re-examined 29 killings from the civil rights era, leading to 27 arrests and 22 convictions. The most recent case was in Philadelphia, Miss., in June when a jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen, 80, of manslaughter for orchestrating the 1964 killings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

Till's relatives said Thursday that they have not been advised of the DNA test results. But Simeon Wright, a cousin, said the family has never had any doubt.

Till was killed Aug. 28, 1955, several days after he whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, outside a store in Money, Miss., she operated with her husband, Roy.

The teen was dragged from his bed at 2 a.m., beaten, shot and thrown into the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a heavy fan from a cotton gin that had been tied around his neck. Photographs of his badly bruised body were published in Jet magazine, and the outrage that resulted helped spur civil rights activists.

Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, identified her son when his body was returned to Chicago a week after his death. Till's father's distinctive ring was on the teen's hand.

"I was the one to identify the ring that was taken off the body," Wright said Thursday. "Those who didn't believe it are holding their head in shame now."

Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam, were acquitted a month after they were charged with Till's murder. The all-white jury deliberated for an hour. In 1956, the two men confessed to a writer for Look magazine that they had killed Till. But they could not be prosecuted again. They have since died.

Aside from the forensic value Till's identification has for the new investigation, it is also salve on a painful wound the family has endured for 50 years.

The jury foreman said one reason why the two men went free was that the body was never officially identified. The sheriff testified during the trial that he couldn't positively identify Till. Over the years, a mythology grew that Till had left Mississippi and run away.

"The DNA test was useful for discounting these urban legends," says David Beito, a University of Alabama professor who has written extensively about the Till case.

"But anybody with any credibility at the time accepted that was Emmett's body, including the sheriff. He gave the body first to Moses Wright (Till's great-uncle) and then to a black funeral parlor. He later claimed the body was as white as he was, but he didn't think that when the body was found."

Although scientific identification of Till was a necessary step, it does not help establish that anyone else is culpable in Till's murder. Historians who have interviewed many of the people surrounding the case doubt charges can ever be brought.

Carolyn Bryant now lives in Greenville, Miss. Testimony at the 1955 trial suggested she might have been at the house with her husband and Milam the night Till was kidnapped. But there are no known witnesses who could place her there or at the scene where Till was murdered.

Another man, Henry Lee Loggins, now 82, is the elderly farmhand who worked for Milam. Loggins has long insisted he had nothing to do with the killing but gave details to filmmaker Keith Beauchamp that suggested he knows more about the events that night than he has said publicly.

Loggins' son, Johnny Thomas, is now the mayor of Glendora, Miss. He requested immunity for his father so his father could tell authorities all he knows. It's not clear how much the ailing Loggins can reveal. He has said repeatedly he knows nothing about that night.

The FBI has said it will conclude its investigation this fall and present its finding to Joyce Chiles, the district attorney in the three-county area where Till's kidnapping and murder occurred.

She would decide whether to file murder charges. The statute of limitations for kidnapping or any other charges has expired.

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