Repost: Black History Month: Emmett Till

This one breaks my heart and feeds my anger.

1955. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was excited about his trip from his home in Chicago's south side to the Mississippi Delta to visit relatives. He had been 'educated in the ways of the south' by his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, who told him how to behave around Southern white people. Mamie Till knew that life in Mississippi was a lot different than in Chicago. In Mississippi, over 500 Black people had been lynched since 1882 and racially motivated murders were not unfamiliar, especially in the Delta where Till was going.

On August 20, 1955, with his mother's warning ringing in his ears, and his deceased father's ring on his finger, Emmett Till set off with his cousin Curtis Jones on the train to Mississippi. When Till and Jones arrived on August 21, they stayed at the home of Till's great-uncle Mose Wright, just on the outskirts of Money, Mississippi.

Three days later, the two boys drove Wright's car into the small town of Money and stopped at Bryant's Grocery store to buy some candy. Prior to going inside, Till pulled out some pictures of his white friends in Chicago and showed them to the local boys outside the store. Those boys dared Till to talk to Carolyn Bryant, the store clerk. Till went into the store, purchased some candy, and what happened as he was leaving is unclear. Till either said, "Bye, baby" or he whistled at Carolyn Bryant.

Neither Emmett Till nor Curtis Jones understood the magnitude of Till's act, so they didn't tell Mose Wright what happened. They continued to think nothing of the event as three days passed without incident; three days of the cousins enjoying their summer vacation. However, on the fourth day, early Sunday morning, Carolyn Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, knocked on the door of Wright's home.

With a pistol and flashlight in hand, they asked Mose Wright whether three boys from Chicago were staying with him. And , because when white people with guns knocked at your door in Mississippi in 1955, and you're a Black man, you let them in, Mose Wright took the two men to a room where Emmett Till was sleeping.

Bryant and Milam told Till to get dressed. Wright unsuccessfully pleaded with them to just whip Till, but the two men ignored his pleas, and threatened to kill Wright if he told anyone. Several hours later, Mamie Till was notified of her son's kidnapping. A search of the area was conducted, and Mamie Till notified Chicago newspapers of her son's disappearance.

Wright told Money's sheriff who had taken Till, and he arrested Bryant and Milam for kidnapping. Little more than a week after Emmett Till arrived in Money, Mississippi, his body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. It was weighted down by a seventy-five-pound cotton gin fan, which was tied around Till's neck with barbed wire. His face was so mutilated that when Wright identified the body, he could only do so based on the ring that Till has been wearing—his dead father's ring.

Mamie Till made the decision, when Emmett's body was returned to Chicago, to have an open casket funeral. She wanted the world to know what had happened to her son. His right eye was missing, his nose was broken, and there was a hole in the side of his head. Fifty-thousand people attended the funeral. Jet magazine ran photos of Till's body; soon Till's murder became an international story.

Down in Money, Mississippi, Milam and Bryant garnered support; whites in their community claimed they were innocent and supported their defense by donating to 'the cause.'

The trial began on September 19, 1955, in Sumner, Mississippi. The entire jury was composed of white men from the defendants' home county. At trial, the defense attorney asserted that the body recovered from the river was not Till's body, and instead, claimed Milam and Bryant had taken Till but had let him go. Milam and Bryant alleged that the NAACP and Mamie Till had dug up a body and claimed that it was Till and that Emmett Till was hiding out in Chicago.

For the prosecution, finding witnesses was difficult for the prosecution. In the South, it was dangerous for Black people to testify against any white person, so those who knew anything were reluctant to come forward. However, white and Black reporters and the NAACP were able to find witnesses against the defendants.

Barely whispering, out of fear of reprisal, Willie Reed testified on the stand that he had seen Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam, and another man with Till. Further, he testified that he heard screaming coming from the Milam barn. When Milam came out of the barn with a .45 on his hip, Milam asked Reed if he had seen anything, and Reed said no. Mose Wright had decided from the beginning that he was going to testify. When Wright took the stand, he testified that Milam and Bryant had taken Till at gunpoint from his home.

After Reed and Wright testified, they were quickly escorted out of Mississippi by the NAACP.

Mamie Till was forced to testify that the body she buried was her son, Emmett Till.

Neither J.W. Milam nor Roy Bryant testified.

The trial lasted five days. In the defense's closing argument, Milam and Bryant's attorney forewarned the jury about convicting the defendants:

"Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I'm sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men."

The jury deliberated for only 67 minutes; a long time because, as one jury said, they'd taken a break to cool off with some soda pop. The jury found Milam and Bryant not guilty. They concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove that the body recovered from the river was Emmett Till.

On January 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confession of Milam and Bryant, who had agreed to tell their story, sell their story for $4,000 since they had already been found not guilty and could not be tried again. According to their confession, they beat Till with a .45 in Milam's barn, and then proceeded to take him to the Tallahatchie River where they had him take off his clothes and then they shot him. A gin fan was tied around his neck with wire in order to weigh the body down in the river. They burned Till's clothes and shoes.

Milam and Bryant were never charged with any other crimes relating to Till’s murder.

After the trial, Black people boycotted the Bryant’s' store, which forced them out of business.

Both Milam and Bryant remained in Mississippi until their deaths. J.W. Milam died of cancer in 1980, twenty-five years after he murdered Emmett Till. Roy Bryant died of cancer in 1994, thirty-nine years after he got away with murder.

Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose accusation led to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till died in 2023. Donham testified in 1955 that Emmett grabbed her hand and waist and propositioned her, saying he had been with “White women before” but in 2017, author Timothy Tyson revealed in his book The Blood of Emmett Till that Donham had recanted her testimony. 

Donham's family publicly denied that she had recanted but the fact is, were it not for her words that a young Black man either whistled at her or said “Bye, baby,” Emmett till would have never been murdered.

Carolyn Bryant Donham died in 2023.

The Funny Papers

Darrin Bell, Tim Campbell, Nick Anderson, Deb Milbrath, John Cole, JD Crowe, Drew Sheneman, Kevin Siers, Kevin Kallaugher, Bill Bramhall, Bill Day, Lalo Alcaraz, Liam Simonelli, Dennis Goris 

The Funny Papers

JD Crowe, Bill Bramhall, Mike Luckovich, Kevin Siers, Michael Ramirez, Ed Hall, Marc Murphy, Nick Anderson, Michael de Adder, Adam Zyglis, David Horsey, Stanislava Preslavska, Ann Telnaes, Clay Bennett, Steve Breen,

A Wall of Protests

Sometimes a protest isn’t a march, a sit-in, or shouting; sometimes it’s just a piece of cardboard with some words scrawled on it stuck to a fence.

And sometimes it’s thousands of signs stuck to a fence that the Racist-In-Chief had built between himself and America.

After cowering in the bunker because people were yelling outside the White House, and after spraying those people with tear gas and rubber bullets for a photo op, the entrances to Pennsylvania Avenue and E Street NW, the Ellipse, and Lafayette Square are barricaded by nearly two miles of mesh metal fences. And now those fences are the perfect spot for protest signs and artwork and … shouting:

“This is what democracy looks like.”

But really, this fence, bearing the words and tears of the people who are tired of what America means to the black community, is what democracy looks like.

It started small; Kai Gamanya hung a painting featuring his take on the raised fist widely associated with the Black Panther Party. Gamanya, a surgical technician, hopes to see the all filled with signs and flowers and hope:

“It’s like the whole nation is crying, and this whole fence is crying, and if you were to back up and see it from beginning to end, it’s nothing but posters from all the way down.”

The nation is shouting.

dcist

Why We Kneel: Emmett Till, 1955 and 2018

Most of you know the story of Emmett Till, but bear with me …

Emmett Till was born and raised in Chicago, but in the summer of 1955, when he was just fourteen, Emmett went to visit relatives in Mississippi. One day he went into to town, to a grocery store, and spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the white owner of the store. There has been some dispute over what occurred inside the store; some say Till was flirting with Bryant, and perhaps even whistled at Bryant.

But we do know that Carolyn Bryant told her husband, and a jury, Emmett Till made physical and verbal advances toward her, though, decades later Carolyn Bryant admitted she’d lied about a great deal of what had happened, especially when she’d said Emmett Till grabbed her waist and uttered obscenities.

But by then it was far too late.

Several nights after the store incident, after Carolyn Bryant lied to her husband Roy about Till, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam went armed to Till's great-uncle's house and took Emmett Till by force.

They took him away and beat him and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and tying a heavy cotton gin fan around his neck, sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Three days later, Till's body was discovered.

His body was returned to Chicago where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket, so the world could see her son’s bloated, mutilated body. That image, and I will not show it here because it’s far too gruesome, sparked the Civil Rights movement.

A few months later, in September 1955, after a nineteen-day trial and an hour of jury deliberations, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury of Till's kidnapping and murder. And then, in 1956, in an interview with Look magazine, and protected against double jeopardy, both men publicly admitted that they had murdered Emmett Till.

After Milam and Bryant were acquitted, they initially remained in Mississippi, but were boycotted, threatened, attacked, and humiliated by locals. Milam died in 1980 at the age of 61, and Bryant died in 1994 at the age of 63. Bryant expressed no remorse for his crime and in fact said:

"Emmett Till is dead. I don't know why he just can't stay dead."

Here’s why … In 2007, fifty-two years after Emmett Till was murdered, historical markers to be erected at locations related to his death—at the river where his body was found and at the spot where Bryant’s store once stood.

But the sign at the river has been replaced three times; the first was stolen in 2007, the second was destroyed by gunfire in 2016; the third sign also has a bullet hole in it.

That’s why people kneel during the anthem; sixty-three years after Emmett Till was murdered because a white woman lied to a jury, his life, his death, are being assaulted.

This is not just an old story, stick around ….

Washington Post

Emmett Till

This one breaks my heart, and feeds my anger.

1955. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was excited about his trip from his home in Chicago's south side to the Mississippi, Delta to visit relatives. He had been 'educated in the ways of the south,' by his mother, Mamie Till Bradley; she told him how to behave around Southern white people. Mamie Till knew that life in Mississippi was a lot different than in Chicago. In Mississippi, over 500 blacks had been lynched since 1882 and racially motivated murders were not unfamiliar, especially in the Delta where Till was going.

On August 20, 1955, with his mother's warning ringing in his ears, and his deceased father's ring on his hand, Emmett Till set off with his cousin Curtis Jones on the train to Mississippi. When Till and Jones arrived on August 21, they stayed at the home of Till's great-uncle Mose Wright, just on the outskirts of Money, Mississippi.

Three days later, the two boys drove Wright's car into the small town of Money and stopped at Bryant's Grocery store to buy some candy. Prior to going inside, Till pulled out some pictures of his white friends in Chicago and showed them to the local boys outside the store. Those boys dared Till to talk to Carolyn Bryant, the store clerk. Till went into the store, purchased some candy, and what happened as he was leaving is unclear. Till either said, "Bye, baby" or he whistled at Carolyn Bryant.

Neither Emmett Till nor Curtis Jones understood the magnitude of Till's act, so they didn't tell Mose Wright what happened. They continued to think nothing of the event as three days passed without incident; three days of the cousins enjoying their summer vacation. However, on the fourth day, early Sunday morning, Carolyn Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, knocked on the door of Wright's home.

With a pistol and flashlight in hand, they asked Mose Wright whether three boys from Chicago were staying with him. And , because when white people with guns knocked at your door in Mississippi in 1955, and you're a black man, you let them in, Mose Wright took the two men to a room where Emmett Till was sleeping.

Bryant and Milam told Till to get dressed. Wright unsuccessfully pleaded with them to just whip Till, but the two men ignored his pleas, and threatened to kill Wright if he told anyone. Several hours later, Mamie Till was notified of her son's kidnapping. A search of the area was conducted, and Mamie Till notified Chicago newspapers of her son's disappearance.

Wright told Money's sheriff who had taken Till, and he arrested Bryant and Milam for kidnapping. Little more than a week after Emmett Till arrived in Money, Mississippi, his body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. It was weighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan, which was tied around Till's neck with barbed wire. His face was so mutilated that when Wright identified the body, he could only do so based on the ring that Till was been wearing--his dead father's ring.

Mamie Till made the decision, when Emmett's body was returned to Chicago, to have an open casket funeral. She wanted the world to know what had happened to her son. His right eye was missing, his nose was broken, and there was a hole in the side of his head. Fifty-thousand people attended the funeral. Jet magazine ran photos of Till's body; soon Till's murder became an international story.

Down in Money, Mississippi, Milam and Bryant garnered support; whites in their community claimed they were innocent and supported their defense by donating to 'the cause.'

The trial began on September 19, 1955 in Sumner, Mississippi. The entire jury was composed of white men from the defendants' home county. At trial they asserted that the body recovered from the river was not Till's body, and instead, claimed Milam and Bryant, they had taken Till but had let him go.

Milam and Bryant alleged that the NAACP and Mamie Till had dug up a body and claimed that it was Till. According to their defense lawyer, Till was hiding out in Chicago.

For the prosecution, finding witnesses was difficult for the prosecution. In the South, it was dangerous for blacks to testify against any white person, so those who knew anything were reluctant to come forward. However, white and black reporters and the NAACP were able to find witnesses against the defendants.

Barely whispering, out of fear of reprisal, Willie Reed testified on the stand that he had seen Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam, and another man with Till. Further, he testified that he heard screaming coming from the Milam barn. When Milam came out of the barn with a .45 on his hip, Milam asked Reed if he saw anything, and Reed said no. Mose Wright had decided from the beginning that he was going to testify. When Wright took the stand, he testified that Milam and Bryant had taken Till at gunpoint from his home.

After Reed and Wright testified, they were quickly escorted out of Mississippi by the NAACP.

Mamie Till was forced to testify that the body she buried was her son, Emmett Till.

Neither J.W. Milam nor Roy Bryant testified.

The trial lasted five days. In the defense's closing argument, Milam and Bryant's attorney forewarned the jury about convicting the defendants: "Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I'm sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men."

The jury deliberated for only 67 minutes; a long time because, as one jury said, they'd stopped to drink soda. The jury found Milam and Bryant not guilty. They concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove that the body recovered from the river was Emmett Till.

On January 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confession of Milam and Bryant, who had agreed to tell their story, sell their story, for $4,000. According to their confession, they beat Till with a .45 in Milam's barn, and then proceeded to take him to the Tallahatchie River where they had him undress and then shot him. A gin fan was tied around his neck with wire in order to weigh the body down in the river. They burned Till's clothes and shoes.

Milam and Bryant were never charged with any other crimes relating to Till’s murder.

After the trial, blacks boycotted the Bryants' store, which forced them out of business. Both

Milam and Bryant remained in Mississippi until their deaths.

J.W. Milam died of cancer in 1980, twenty-five years after he murdered Emmett Till.

Roy Bryant died of cancer in 1994, thirty-nine years after he got away with murder.