Exemplification Essay: The Murder Of Emmett Till

Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, Illinois 14 years of age was brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman while visiting family in Money, Mississippi. His killers, the white woman’s husband and her brother, made Emmett carry a 75 pound cotton gin fan to the banks of the Tallahatchie River and made him to take off his clothes. The two then beat Emmett nearly to death, took out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

August 24, while standing with his cousins and some friends outside a country store in Money, Mississippi Emmett bragged that his girlfriend back home was white. They all disbelieving him and dared Emmett to ask the white woman sitting behind the store counter on a date. Emmett went in, bought some candy, and on the way out was heard saying, “Bye, baby” to the woman. There were no witnesses in the store, but Carolyn Bryant, the women behind the counter claimed that Emmett had grabbed her, and

He was returning from a business trip a few days later and found out how Emmett had spoken to his wife. Mr. Bryant then went to the home of Emmett great uncle, Mose Wright, with his brother in law J.W. Milam on August 28. The two men demanded to see the boy. They then forced Emmett into their car then drove him down to the Tallahatchie River.

Three days later, Emmett body was recovered but was so disfigured that Mose Wright, his great uncle could only identify it by an initialed ring. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, requested the body to be sent back to Chicago. After seeing her child, she decided to have an open casket funeral so that the world could see what racist murderers had done to her son. Jet magazine, an African American weekly magazine, which is still around today published a photo of Emmett’s corpse, and soon the mainstream media picked up on the