Emmett Till face after lynching

Emmett Till, an African American teenager from Chicago, was brutally murdered on August 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, for reportedly flirting with a white lady four days earlier.

His attackers, the husband and brother of the white woman, forced Emmett to carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the Tallahatchie River bank and told him to strip off.

Then, after shooting him in the head and beating him nearly to death, the two guys tied his body to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire before throwing it into the river.

Emmett Till: Who Was He?

Even though Till had attended a segregated primary school while growing up in a working-class area on the south side of Chicago, he was unprepared for Mississippi’s level of segregation.

Because of his race, his mother cautioned him to exercise caution, but Emmett liked playing practical jokes.

On August 24, Emmett boasted that his sweetheart back home was white as he stood with his relatives and a few pals outside a country store in Money.

Emmett’s African American friends challenged him to ask the white woman seated behind the store counter out on a date since they didn’t believe him.

He entered, purchased some sweets, and was overheard saying, “Bye, baby,” to the woman as he left. Although there were no witnesses present, the cashier, Carolyn Bryant, later alleged that he grabbed her, made obscene overtures, and wolf-whistled at her as he walked out of the store.

Emmett Till face after lynching

A few days later, the store’s owner and the woman’s husband Roy Bryant heard what Emmett reportedly said to his wife while on a business trip.

He was so furious that early on August 28 he and his half-brother J.W. Milam rushed to the house of Till’s great uncle, Mose Wright.

The two made a request to see the boy. Wright begged them not to, but they dragged Emmett into their vehicle. They drove Till down to the Tallahatchie River after driving around in the dark and maybe beating him in a toolhouse behind Milam’s house.

 

 

His body was discovered three days later, but Mose Wright could only identify it by the initialled ring because of how horribly mangled it was. Although Till Bradley’s mother, Mamie Bradley, asked that it be sent back to Chicago, the authorities intended to bury the body right away.