On July 25, 1941, Mamie and Louis Till had a son, Emmett Louis Till. Emmett’s mother Mamie was from the South, but her family moved to Chicago because of the discrimination faced by African Americans. Mamie was an Honor Roll student and only the fourth black student to graduate from Argo Community High School. Emmett’s father Louis was from Missouri. He was an amateur boxer. On October 14, 1940 Mamie and Louis married, only to separate two years later. Louis Till died when Emmett was only four years old. When his father passed, his mother was given the ring his father was wearing when he died.
In the summer of 1955, Emmett Till was fourteen years old. He wanted to go stay with his family for two weeks in Mississippi, for his summer
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The jury was made up of twelve males, all of them white, because blacks and women were not allowed to serve jury duty. The court room was filled with people. The temperature inside the court room was said to be one hundred and eighteen degrees. The windows were open and the ceiling fans were going inside the court house. During the trial, Sheriff Strider testified, that he believed the body that was pulled out of the Tallahatchie river, could not have been that of Emmett Till. The sheriff stated that he believed that body had been there ten to fifteen days. Too long to be that of the body of Emmett Till. Also at the trial Moses Wright, Tills great Uncle testified for the prosecution. Wright testified that Bryant and Milam came to his home on August 28 and carried his relative off into the night. When asked to identify the two men, Wright arose from his seat very dramatically and pointed his finger directly at Bryant and Milam. Wright told jurors he identified the body pulled from the river as being Emmett Till and that he was "looking right at" the undertaker as he pulled the ring with the inscription "L.T." from one of Till's fingers. Wright, then identified the silver ring in the courtroom. The ring was one of the prosecutions key
Reed the son of a nearby sharecropper, testified that he heard sounds of beating and cries of help. Afterwards three white men loaded something wrapped in a tarp onto a pickup truck. At this point no one knew if Emmett was still alive. Bryant and Milam then took Emmett to the Tallahatchie River and made him strip. When Milam noticed Emmett did not seem regretful he decided to shoot Emmett.
Emmett Louis Till, nicknamed Bobo, was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois. Till was raised by his single mother, Mamie Till, and never knew his father, due to the couple’s separation and his father’s untimely death by execution. At the age of 5, Emmett caught a severe case of polio but made a full recovery, leaving him with a somewhat noticeable stutter. Growing up, he spent the majority of his days taking care of the house while his mother worked long hours balancing two jobs. He attended the all-black school of McCosh Grammar School.
Although there are doubts about who was involved in Emmett Till’s death, the only perpetrators that were tried in court were Roy Bryant, and J.W Milam (Anderson). August 28, 1955 was the day Till was kidnapped and murdered (Emmett Till Biography). Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam went in Mose Wright`s house and demanded the Chicago nigger (Linder).Till was wake up out of his sleep to be dragged to the back of a pickup truck (Linder). He was shot in the right ear, beat with a 45. Colt, and had a gin fan wrapped around his neck with barbed wire (Huie).
Moses Wright reported Till's disappearance to the local authorities, and three days later, his corpse was pulled out of the river. Till's face was mutilated beyond recognition, and Wright only managed to positively identify him by the ring on his finger, engraved with his father's initials—"L.T." ” . This evidence is showing that Mr. Bryant and his brother-in-law, beat and shot Emmett until his face could not be identified. When the authorities found his body at the condition that Mr. Bryant and his brother in law had left him in, they wanted to bury his body immediately, but his mother wanted his body to be sent to Chicago. When she saw the conditions of his body, she wanted to have an open-casket funeral because she wanted everyone in her hometown to see what they had did
On the day of August 24, 1955, 14 year old Emmett Till was on vacation to Money, Mississippi when he was murdered because he was flirting with a white woman. He was killed by the woman’s husband and her brother. The murderers made him carry a 75 pound cotton gin to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where he was forced to take off his clothes, and was beaten to death, had an eye gouged out, shot in the head, and then tied to the cotton gin with barbed wire. He was then thrown into the river to die. Till grew up in a working class neighborhood south of Chicago, and he went to a segregated school, but he wasn’t ready for the segregation he would face in Mississippi.
In August 1955, Emmett went down south to Money, Mississippi to visit family for the first time since he was nine years old. His mama tried to remind him of the different laws for blacks in the South but like most teenage boys, it went in one ear and out the other. A few days into his visit, Emmett entered the general store and innocently flirted with the clerk,Carolyn Bryant. A few days later two male members of the clerk's family kidnapped Emmett from his uncle house. They beat him, gouged out his eye, tied him to a cotton gin fan with barb wire and then threw him into the Tallahatchie river.
The abduction, torture, and murder of Emmett "Bobo" Till in August of 1955 was a major turning point in history that motivated the [African-American] Civil Rights Movement. When the accused, half-brothers Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were tried and acquitted of all charges, this caused uproar in the African-American community. There were several factors that contributed to the outcome of the case, such as gender, class, and ethnicity. These factors and several others will be discussed throughout this essay. BACKGROUND OF EMMETT TILL Emmett Louis
“At 2:30 am, a green pickup truck pulled into the front of the Wrights home east of Money. When Wright went to door, the man identified as Roy Bryant and said he wanted to talk to “a fat boy” from Chicago. The men then charged through the house and dragged Emmett out of his bed and throw him in the back of the pick up”(Kinnon). After a day went by his family was worried, Then about three days later “a fisherman found Emmett's body in the Tallahatchie river with his face pounded in, his eye detached, his ear missing and had a wired cotton gin fan to his neck”(Larsson). Emmett's uncle was called to the scene to identify the body, when Mose Wright Emmett's uncle, identified the body as Emmett's then took the body and placed it in the casket and sent it to Chicago as Emmett's mother
Born in 1941 in Chicago, Illinois, Emmett Louis Till was raised by his single mother who was an extraordinary woman. She defied social constraints and discrimination she faced as an African American. At the age of six, Till was diagnosed with polio which left him with a permanent stutter, but that never stopped his positive attitude. Nicknamed Bobo, was well liked and those who knew him described him as responsible and funny. He also liked to joke and play around with his friends.
The murder of Emmett Till was a day that no one will ever forget it was the most horrific murder of all time. July 25, 1941 Emmett Louis Till was born Emmett was raised in a nice middle class neighborhood in the southside of Chicago, Illinois being raised by a single mother after his father Louis Till was hung in the army after being accused of rape and a killing. Emmett Till attended Mccosh Elementary school and was one of the first African American kid to get honor roll. July 25, 1946 Emmett aka “Bobo” was diagnosed with Polio at the age of five but Emmett managed to have a full recovery by the age of eight. August 1955 Emmett’s uncle Moses Wright from Money, Mississippi came to visit his sister Mamie Till and Emmett, Moses and Emmett
Then they stopped on a dirt road, near a steep bank in the river. The men tied the fan to Till's neck with barbed wire, and rolled the dead fourteen-year-old into the river. Three days later and eight miles downstream, a boy named Robert Hodges, who was fishing in the Tallahatchie and saw feet sticking out of the water. The badly beaten and bloated body was pulled from the river and loaded into a boat. Called to the scene, Mose Wright peaked into the boat on the riverbank and identified the body of Emmett Till.
Emmett was so disfigured that the only way his body was identified was by the ring that his mother had given him prior to the
His mother had done a bold thing. She refused to let him be buried until hundreds of thousands marched past his open casket in Chicago and looked down at his mutilated body. [I] felt a deep kinship to him when I learned he was born the same year and day I was. My father talked about it at night and dramatized the crime. I couldn’t get Emmett out of my mind”.—Muhammed Ali, boxer 13
It was three days before Till’s body was discovered in the river. When his mother Mamie received his body back in Chicago, she decided to have an open casket. The reasoning for the open casket being so the world can see just how cruel racism is. A fourteen-year-old boy was lynched and justice needed to be served. However, when the trial came, Milam and Bryan were acquitted by an
Emmett Till was a loving, fun fourteen year old boy who grew up on the Southside of Chicago. During 1955, classrooms were segregated yet Till found a way to cope with the changes that was happening in the world. Looking forward to a visit with his cousins, Emmett was ecstatic and was not prepared for the level of segregation that would occur in Money, Mississippi when he arrived. Emmett was a big prankster, but his mother reminded him of his race and the differences that it caused. When Till arrived in Money, he joined in with his family and visited a local neighborhood store for a quick beverage.