Milam, abducted Till and tortured him to death. The two men were indicted and tried in September 1955. Outraged, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. (As Vanity Fair reports, he was said to have a lisp and may not have actually whistled.) Bryant’s wife, Carolyn, was working in the store and spent about one minute alone with Till before others heard him whistle at her. In August 1955, the Chicago youth was visiting family in Sumner County, Mississippi, when he entered Roy Bryant’s country store to buy some bubble gum. Five decades later, she confessed, “That part’s not true.” From his open-casket funeral.Carolyn Bryant testified in 1955 that 14-year-old Emmett Till grabbed her and verbally threatened her three days before her husband and brother-in-law abducted and tortured the teenager to death. Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama for a white passenger, attributed her own dedication to activism in part to the memory of Emmett Till.Įmmett Till's disfigured face. Milam and Bryant later agreed to a confessional interview, published in 1956 by Look magazine, for which they received $4,000. On September 15, Jet magazine garnered national media attention by publishing what would become a famous photograph of Till's body on a funeral slab. The funeral, which was held in Chicago on September 3, was attended by thousands of people. Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett's mother, notably insisted on having an open casket funeral for her son. In November, the two were found not guilty of kidnapping. Till's disfigured body was found in the Tallahatchie River three days after he was reported missing.Ī jury in Sumner, Mississippi acquitted Bryant and Milam of murder in September.
Bryant and Milam then took Till away, brutally tortured him, and eventually killed him. They reached the home of Moses Wright, where Till was staying for the summer, and demanded to see the young man. Though the precise details of what followed remain uncertain, Till allegedly made suggestive comments towards Carolyn Bryant while in the store, and possibly even whistled at her and touched her hand or waist.Īfter hearing about the incident, Bryant and Milam set out to find Till at 2:30 am on August 28. Roy Bryant was away from the store working a second job as a truck driver, so his wife and her sister-in-law Juanita Milam were running the store.
Till and seven of his cousins visited a small grocery store owned by the Bryants on August 24, 1955. The event became a catalyst for the burgeoning civil rights movement, which mobilized against the senseless violence inflicted against African Americans.īryant and Milam went after the fourteen-year-old boy after hearing that Till flirted with his wife, Carolyn. They tortured Till before killing him, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River. He was abducted from his uncle Moses Wright's home by Bryant and Milam. Till was a Chicago native, but spent the summer visiting family in the Mississippi Delta. Emmett Louis Till, who went by the nickname “Bobo,” was murdered on Augby Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.
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