Video Analysis: The Death Of Emmett Till

August 19, 1955 was a day that Mamie Till Mobley will never forget, it was the last day that she would ever see her son, Emmett Till, alive. Only 5 days later, he was in Mississippi visiting his uncle, Moses Wright, and cousins. Being from the north, Emmett was not used to the racist south, and he did not know what was and was not permitted. He and some of his friends went to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, to buy drinks after working in the fields earlier that day. According to the video on biography.com, while in the store Emmett whistled at, Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the store owner. On August 28, 1955 Emmett was kidnapped in the middle of the night by Carolyn Bryant’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam. The two men brutally beat, mutilated, and shot Emmett Till, and afterwards tied down his body and threw it into the Tallahatchie River,

The body was then sent to Chicago where Mamie Mobley demanded on an open casket funeral. The funeral was largely publicized, with more than 100,000 people attending. Afterwards his mutilated body was published in newspapers such as the Jet and the Chicago Defender. The most shocking part of this event is the trial that followed. On September 19, 1955, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were tried for the murder of Emmett Till. Since blacks did not have all the rights that whites had even in the north, the jury that tried him consisted of only white males. Moses Wright testified against the men accusing them of the murder, which was unheard of at the time. All the evidence pointed towards the guilt of Bryant and Milam, but they were found not guilty. Although this is surprising now, at the time most of the people thought that this would be the outcome of the trail. A couple months after the trial ended, in an interview, the two men admitted to killing Emmett Till for