Emmett Till’s Murder

In August of 1955, an event occurred that helped to ignite the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century. Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25 of 1941, though his life was short-lived, for he died at the young age of fourteen in the year 1955. He was a young African-American boy from Chicago Illinois who was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi. Just as thousands of other young teenagers did, Till went to the grocery store with a bunch of his friends on the twenty-fourth of August for candy and soda. This appears to be innocent enough, that is until young Emmet Till was supposedly dared to flirt with co-owner of the Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, Carolyn Bryant. She was a young, 21-year-old white woman who was married to Roy Bryant who, shortly after, was told of the occurrence. The young Mrs. Bryant said “the young man used unprintable words,” however others argue that his slight stutter may have been misinterpreted. Either way, for a black man to flirt with a white woman no matter what their ages may be, it was completely uncalled for and not allowed in twentieth-century society. On August 28th, Bryant and his half brother drove to Reverend Wright’s house where Emmet stayed and put him in their pickup truck and left. According to witnesses, “they drove him to a weathered shed on a plantation in neighboring Sunflower County, where they beat, then shot him. A 70-pound cotton gin fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire to weigh down the body, which they dropped into the Tallahatchie River…another small cotton town north of Money. Although Bryant tried to claim that they set the boy loose, word got out that Till was missing; later his bod was found “swollen and disfigured” in the river, three days after his abduction. Till’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley demanded an open casket at his funeral people could take photographs and “the world [could] see what they did to [her] baby.” Eventually, up to 50 thousand people viewed his body. Emmett Till, an unfortunate, young 14-year-old African American, went through a tragic and fatal situation that enraged the nation. This young boy will always be remembered as one of the many crucial beginnings to the greatest Civil Rights Movement America has ever known.