Civil Rights Events

Emmett Till -- Part One

 

 

The murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till August 28, 1955, in Money, Mississippi, the photographic evidence presented in national news outlets of the brutality administered, and the acquittal of Till’s murderers September 23 are credited by many historians as the major impetus for the advent of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. would write that Till’s murder “was one of the most brutal and inhuman crimes of the 20th century.”  One hundred days after Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, sparking the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott.  … "I thought about Emmett Till, and I couldn't go back [to the back of the bus], Parks wrote (Emmett 4).

 

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, the only child of Louis and Mamie Till. Till never knew his father, a private in the United States Army during World War II.

 

Mamie and Louis Till separated in 1942, and three years later, the family received word from the Army that the soldier had been executed for "willful misconduct" while serving in Italy (Emmett 2), the misconduct being the rape of two women and the murder of another.

 

Defying the social constraints and discrimination she faced as an African-American woman growing up in the 1920s and '30s, Mamie Till excelled both academically and professionally.

 

She was only the fourth black student to graduate from suburban Chicago's predominantly white Argo Community High School, and the first black student to make the school's "A" Honor Roll. While raising Emmett Till as a single mother, she worked long hours for the Air Force as a clerk in charge of confidential files.

 

Emmett Till, who went by the nickname Bobo, grew up in a thriving, middle-class black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. The neighborhood was a haven for black-owned businesses, and the streets he roamed as a child were lined with black-owned insurance companies, pharmacies and beauty salons as well as nightclubs that drew the likes of Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan.

 

Those who knew Till best described him as a responsible, funny and infectiously high-spirited child. He was stricken with polio at the age of 5, but managed to make a full recovery, save a slight stutter that remained with him for the rest of his life.

 

With his mother often working more than 12-hour days, Till took on his full share of domestic responsibilities from a very young age. "Emmett had all the house responsibility," his mother later recalled. "I mean everything was really on his shoulders, and Emmett took it upon himself. He told me if I would work, and make the money, he would take care of everything else. He cleaned, and he cooked quite a bit. And he even took over the laundry."

 

Till attended the all-black McCosh Grammar School. His classmate and childhood pal, Richard Heard, later recalled, "Emmett was a funny guy all the time. He had a suitcase of jokes that he liked to tell. He loved to make people laugh. He was a chubby kid; most of the guys were skinny, but he didn't let that stand in his way. He made a lot of friends at McCosh."

 

In August 1955, Till's great uncle, Moses Wright, came up from Mississippi to visit the family in Chicago. At the end of his stay, Wright was planning to take Till's cousin, Wheeler Parker, back to Mississippi with him to visit relatives down South, and when Till, who was just 14 years old at the time, learned of these plans, he begged his mother to let him go along.

 

Initially, Till's mother was opposed to the idea. She wanted to take a road trip to Omaha, Nebraska, and tried to convince her son to join her with the promise of open-road driving lessons.

 

But Till desperately wanted to spend time with his cousins in Mississippi, and in a fateful decision that would have grave impact on their lives and the course of American history, Till's mother relented and let him go.

 

On August 19, 1955—the day before Till left with his uncle and cousin for Mississippi—Mamie Till gave her son his late father's signet ring, engraved with the initials "L.T."

 

The next day she drove her son to the 63rd Street station in Chicago. They kissed goodbye, and Till boarded a southbound train headed for Mississippi. It was the last time they ever saw each other  (Emmett 3-4).

 

The plan had been to stay in “the small northern Mississippi town of Money” for two weeks.  “Emmett sampled the Mississippi life of his cousins during the first three days of his visit: picking cotton, shooting off fireworks, stealing watermelons, and swimming in a snake-infested pond” (Linder 2) .

 

In an article for Look Magazine, which appeared in January 1956, investigative reporter William Bradford Huie wrote: About 7:30 pm, eight young Negroes -- seven boys and a girl -- in a '46 Ford had stopped outside [Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market]. They included sons, grandsons and a nephew of Moses (Preacher) Wright, 64, a 'cropper. They were between 13 and 19 years old. Four were natives of the Delta and others, including the nephew, Emmett (Bobo) Till, were visiting from the Chicago area.

 

Bobo Till was 14 years old: born on July 25, 1941. He was stocky, muscular, weighing about 160, five feet four or five. Preacher later testified: "He looked like a man."

 

Bobo's party joined a dozen other young Negroes, including two other girls, in front of the store. Bryant had built checkerboards there. Some were playing checkers, others were wrestling and "kiddin' about girls."

 

Bobo bragged about his white girl. He showed the boys a picture of a white girl in his wallet; and to their jeers of disbelief, he boasted of success with her.

 

"You talkin' mighty big, Bo," one youth said. "There's a pretty little white woman in the store. Since you know how to handle white girls, let's see you go in and get a date with her?"

 

"You ain't chicken, are yuh, Bo?" another youth taunted him (Huie 5).

 

Huie explains: Carolyn Holloway Bryant is 21, five feet tall, weighs 103 pounds. An Irish girl, with black hair and black eyes, she is a small farmer's daughter who, at 17, quit high school at Indianola, Miss., to marry a soldier, Roy Bryant, then 20. The couple have two boys, three and two; and they operate a store at a dusty crossroads called Money: post office, filling station and three stores clustered around a school and a gin, and set in the vast, lonely cotton patch that is the Mississippi Delta.

 

Carolyn and Roy Bryant are poor: no car, no TV. They live in the back of the store which Roy's brothers helped set up when he got out of the 82nd Airborne in 1953. They sell "snuff-and-fatback" to Negro field hands on credit: and they earn little because, for one reason, the government has been giving the Negroes food they formerly bought.

 

Carolyn and Roy Bryant's social life is visits to their families, to the Baptist church, and, whenever they can borrow a car, to a drive-in, with the kids sleeping in the back seat. They call Shane the best picture they ever saw.

 

For extra money, Carolyn tends store when Roy works outside -- like truck driving for a brother. And he has many brothers. His mother had two husbands, 11 children.

 

On Wednesday evening, August 24, 1955, Roy was in Texas, on a brother's truck. He had carted shrimp from New Orleans to San Antonio, proceeded to Brownsville. Carolyn was alone in the store. But back in the living quarters was her sister-in-law Juanita Milam, 27, with her two small sons and Carolyn's two. The store was kept open till 9 on week nights, 11 on Saturday.

 

When her husband was away, Carolyn Bryant never slept in the store, never stayed there alone after dark. Moreover, in the Delta, no white woman ever travels country roads after dark unattended by a man.

 

This meant that during Roy's absences -- particularly since he had no car -- there was family inconvenience. Each afternoon, a sister-in-law arrived to stay with Carolyn until closing time. Then, the two women, with their children, waited for a brother-in-law to convoy them to his home. Next morning, the sister-in-law drove Carolyn back.

 

Juanita Milam had driven from her home in Glendora. She had parked in front of the store to the left; and under the front seat of this car was Roy Bryant's pistol, a .38 Colt automatic. Carolyn knew it was there. After 9, Juanita's husband, J. W. Milam, would arrive in his pickup to shepherd them to his home for the night (Huie 4-5).

 

Challenged by his peers, Till entered the Bryant store.  Accounts of what happened inside varied, considerably.  Carolyn Bryant’s testimony during the trial of her husband and brother-in-law was condemnatory.

 

Bryant said that "just after dark" with her alone in the store, Till strongly gripped her hand as she held it out on the candy counter to collect money.  She said she jerked her hand loose "with much difficulty" as Till asked her, "How about a date, baby?"  When she tried to walk away, she stated, Till grabbed her by the waist and said, "You needn't be afraid of me.  I've"--and here Bryant said Till used an "unprintable word"--"white women before."  Bryant testified, "I was just scared to death."  After listening to Bryant's testimony, Judge Curtis Swango ruled it inadmissible though, as courtroom observers noted, every juror undoubtedly had heard Bryant's story already anyway ((Linder 8).

 

Years later, Simeon Wright, Emmett’s cousin, offered this account. 

 

As we reached Bryant’s store, we continued our usual small talk and banter.  We were still excited about the day’s events and happy to be in town together.  We all got out of the car and were milling around in the front of the store when Wheeler [Emmett’s cousin] went in to buy a pop or some candy.  Bobo went in after him; then Wheeler came out, leaving Bobo in there alone.

 

Maurice immediately sent me into the store to be with Bobo.  He was concerned about Bobo being in the store alone because of what had happened on the previous Sunday, when Bobo had set his fireworks off inside the city limits.  He just didn’t know the Mississippi rules, and Maurice felt that someone should be with Bobo at all times.

 

For less than a minute he was in the store alone with Carolyn Bryant, the white woman working at the cash register.  What he said, if anything, before I came in I don’t know.  While I was in the store, Bobo did nothing inappropriate.   He didn’t grab Mrs. Bryant, nor did he put his arms around her – that was the story she later told to the court.  A counter separated the customers from the store clerk; Bobo would have had to jump over it to get to Mrs. Bryant.  Bobo didn’t ask her for a date or call her “baby.”  There was no lecherous conversation between them.  And after a few minutes he paid for his items and we left the store together.  We had been outside the store only a few seconds when Mrs. Bryant came out behind us, heading straight to her car.  As she walked, Bobo whistled at her.  I think he wanted to get a laugh out of us or something.  He was always joking around, and it was hard to tell when he was serious.  It was a loud wolf whistle, a big-city “whee wheeeee!” and it caught us all by surprise.  We all looked at each other, realizing that Bobo had violated a longstanding unwritten law, a social taboo about conduct between blacks and white in the South.  Suddenly we felt we were in danger, and we stared at each other, all with the same expression of fear and panic.  Like a group of boys who had thrown a rock through somebody’s window, we ran to the car.  Bobo, with a slight limp from the polio he’d contracted as a child, ran along with us, but not as panic-stricken as we were.  After seeing our fright, it did slowly dawn on him that he had done something wrong (Wright 1).

 

Newspaperman Devery Anderson offered a slightly different interpretation.  Till entered the store and purchased bubble gum; when he left, Carolyn followed him to the door. A Northerner unfamiliar with Southern etiquette, he then waved, said "goodbye" (not "goodbye, ma'am"), and, according to family members, directed a wolf-whistle at the young white woman. She became upset and went toward a car -- to get a gun, according to trial testimony. Till and his frightened companions got in their own car and sped off toward home (Anderson 1)

 

Thus had been set the pretext for a horrible crime.

 

Works cited:

 

Anderson, Devery.  “Widow of Emmett Till Killer Dies Quietly, Notoriously.”  The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger.   Feb. 27, 2014.   USA Today.  Web.  <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/27/emmett-till-juanita-milam/5873235/.>

 

“Emmett Till.”  Biography.   July 13, 2018.  A&E Television Networks.  Web.  <https://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515.>

 

Huie, William Bradford.  “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi.”  Look.  January 1956.  Web.  <http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/till/confession.html.>

 

Linder, Douglass O.  “The Emmett Till Murder Trial: An Account.”  2012.  Web.  <http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/till/tillaccount.html.>

 

Wright, Simeon.  “Two Accounts of the Incident at Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market.”  Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till.   Web.    http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/till/bryantstore.html.