Emmet Till, 14, was an African-American young man from Chicago who was visiting his family in Mississippi. A woman named Carolyn Bryant accused Till of grabbing her, making lewd advances, and then wolf-whistling at her.
Carolyn’s husband and his pal then located Till and brutally beat him to death. He was so disfigured that his family was only able to identify him because of an initialed ring. Till’s mother requested that her son’s corpse be sent back to Chicago to hold an open casket funeral to show the world what was going on in America. Jet magazine published a photo of Till’s disfigured corpse and the Civil Rights Movement was born.
The two thugs responsible for this crime were acquitted the same year by an all-white, all-male jury, therefore, they could not be retried (Sounds familiar?) They both died long ago, but Bryant recently confessed that her accusations were not true in an interview with a Duke University professor, Timothy B. Tyson.
It’s so sad to hear that innocent Black people are still losing their lives over the words of privileged white people 62 years later.
