EMMET TILL CONTINUED The jury was made up of entirely white men. After listening to the facts of the case for five days, they deliberated7 for just 67 minutes before concluding that Bryant and Milam were not guilty. One juror said in an interview, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop,8 it wouldn’t have taken that long.”

Just one year later, in 1956, Bryant and Milam sold their story to Look magazine. In the interview they gave their account of the murder for the very first time (they did not speak during their trial). Because they were found not guilty, they could not be tried again in a court of law for the murder. They admitted to everything, including shooting him to death, and filled in many details from the story. According to their account in the interview, their original intent was to beat him up and leave him on a riverbank, just to teach him a lesson. But as they continued to beat him, Emmett called them names and insisted he was just as good as they were. Presumably out of anger, they drove to the edge of the Tallahatchie, shot Emmett in the head, tied a weight around his neck with barbed wire, and threw his body into the water.

Milam explained why he felt he had to kill Emmet: “‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ‘em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. I’m going to make an example of you – just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’” Throughout the interview, the two men never showed any sign of guilt or wrongdoing; in their minds they had done what was right to protect their families and their country – they were heroes. Mamie Till later confirmed that “they never regretted what they had done.… He said he would do the same thing over again, to whoever got in his way. I felt sorry for him.”

A SYMBOL FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
Reactions to the feature in Look shed light on the complex race issues facing the country in the 1950s. Letters to the editor flooded in, some congratulating the interviewer’s bravery. One preacher from Ohio wrote, “You are to be complimented for your willingness to stick your neck out in this manner for the sake of justice.”

[15]But others condemned9 the piece: “By this example of opinionated, baseless reporting, Look itself pays scant10 recognition to the traditions of American Justice it claims were ignored,” said one Mississippi reporter. Another writer defended Bryant and Milam, saying, “[They] did what had to be done, and their courage… is to be commended.11 To have followed any other course would have been unrealistic [and] cowardly.” Reactions like these across the South prompted people to understand the need for greater equality between blacks and whites.

Emmett Till’s murder became one of the most important catalysts12 of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. When Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December of 1955, she said later she had been thinking of Emmett and the injustice he experienced. Her action sparked the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, which brought the Civil Rights movement to the national stage.

Two years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which set up protections for black voters and established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department; federal officials could now get directly involved in cases where civil rights were being abridged. Later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended all forms of segregation13 in public places and banned employment discrimination.

Mamie Till, who passed away in 2003, understood the significance of Emmett’s death. She herself became actively involved in empowering black youth in Chicago. But the pain of her son’s murder never left her completely. “This is what really started the civil rights movement, that’s what everyone tells me. But I was not trying to start anything. I was just upset that my only child was gone, and so needlessly.”

Emmett Till was brutally murdered because of who he was. There is nothing that can explain or justify what happened to him. Even more disturbingly, there have been thousands of other African Americans who were also lynched, and many of their names have been erased from history. Because of the circumstances surrounding his death and Mamie Till's refusal to let his death be in vain, 14 his story has become one of the most well-known.