American Experience (1988) s15e06 Episode Script
The Murder of Emmett Till
1
(birds chirping)
♪
REPORTER (on tape):
This is the muddy, backwoods
Tallahatchie River,
where a weighted body was found,
alleged to be that
of young Emmett Till.
MAMIE TILL:
I saw a hole,
which I presumed
was a bullet hole,
and I could look
through that hole
and see daylight
on the other side.
And I wondered,
"Was it necessary to shoot him?"
Here is Money, Mississippi,
the home of Roy Bryant.
It was here that the
Chicago Negro boy Emmett Till
is alleged to have paid
unwelcome attention
to Roy Bryant's
most attractive wife.
MAN:
When white women
was on the streets,
you had to get off
of the street.
That was a way of life,
and all a white woman had to say
was, "That nigger kind of
looked at me or sassed me."
So we're talking
about a way of life that, uh,
in this part of the country,
that was enforced by law.
REPORTER:
This was the home
of Mose Wright.
It was from this shack the state
alleges Emmett Till was taken
by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam.
WHEELER PARKER:
The house was as dark
as a thousand midnights.
You couldn't see.
It was like a nightmare.
I mean I mean, if
someone come and stand over you
with a pistol in one hand
and a flashlight
and you're 16 years old, uh,
this was a terrifying
experience.
WILLIAM WINTER:
The Till case held the
whole system up for inspection
by the rest of the country
and by the rest of the world.
It was the beginning of the
focusing on the problems, uh,
between the races
in the deep South
that culminated in the ultimate
civil rights battles
of the of
of the rest of the '50s
and and into the '60s.
ROSE JOURDAIN:
I think Black people's reaction
was so visceral
and I think it was probably,
more than anything else
in terms of the mass
Civil Rights Movement,
the spark
that that launched it.
Everybody knew
we were under attack
and that attack
was symbolized by the attack
on a 14-year-old boy.
♪
WINTER:
When one drives
through the Loess Hills
and looks out at the sweep
of those fields below
Flat as a pancake
as far as the eye can see
It's breathtaking.
Those who have not been
to the Delta, uh,
find themselves gasping
at the sight
as they come over
the Loess Hills
and see that expanse
of flat agricultural land.
NARRATOR:
It was the summer of 1955
when Emmett Till arrived
in Mississippi from Chicago.
His family had worked cotton
for generations,
but this trip would be Emmett's
introduction to the Delta,
known as the most southern place
on earth.
FILM NARRATOR:
This is Mississippi.
Today a situation exists
in Mississippi
that is unlike the situation
in most states in the nation.
In some sections of the state,
there is a preponderance
of colored citizens.
This situation
has brought problems,
it has created challenges,
but most important of all,
it has inspired a social system
to meet the challenge.
In every community
in Mississippi,
there is segregation
of the races.
Drinking fountains
are segregated.
Restrooms are segregated.
The local theater is segregated.
Negroes sit in the balcony.
You never in any way said
anything that they didn't like.
You didn't disagree with them
on a whole.
You just didn't do that.
If a white person
did something to you,
you had no recourse at all.
People disappeared.
We don't know
what happened to them.
They just disappeared.
♪
NARRATOR:
In the 75 years before Emmett
Till set foot in Mississippi,
more than 500 Black people
had been lynched in the state.
Most were men
who had been accused
of associating with white women.
PEARSON:
Part of that culture
was that the women
were put on pedestals
and they were, uh,
some sort of um
idealization of whatever
it means
to be woman or to be female.
There was an almost, uh,
irrational fear of Black men,
uh, as if every Black man
was ready to attack
or rape a white woman
if you gave them the chance.
I can remember
when my father died,
Sammy the Black man
who worked for him was there
and I threw my arms
around his neck,
and he pulled away from me.
He could not have that,
you know,
physical show of affection,
of sharing grief or whatever.
Black men did not touch
white women.
♪
WINTER:
Many white southerners, perhaps
most deep South southerners,
had convinced themselves
that, uh, Black people
were relatively happy
in their in their segregated
relationships with white people.
Most white people, I think,
had convinced themselves
that this was
a defensible social system
in which they lived.
WITHERS:
I had a cousin
that was living in Mississippi
and was walking down
the sidewalk
down near downtown in Tunica
and didn't get off the sidewalk,
and the man slapped him
and knocked him off
the sidewalk.
And he got up.
Instead of killing the white man
like he wanted,
he just started walking
and never stopped
until he got to Memphis
and never stopped
until he got up to Chicago.
MAN (on record):
Home ♪
Baby, don't you want to go? ♪
NARRATOR:
Hundreds of thousands
of Black people fled Mississippi
for Chicago in the years
between the world wars.
One-way train fare of $11.10
took them to a different world.
MAN:
To my sweet home Chicago. ♪
NARRATOR:
Neighborhoods and schools
were segregated,
but the city offered
a kind of freedom
Black Mississippians
could only dream about.
TILL:
Chicago was a land of promise
and they thought that milk
and honey was everywhere.
And so it was a lot
of excitement leaving the South,
leaving the cotton fields.
You could hold your head up
in Chicago.
MAN:
To my sweet home ♪
NARRATOR:
Mamie Carthan arrived in Chicago
at the age of two.
An only child, young Mamie
was the hope of her family
of former sharecroppers.
She graduated from high school
at the top of her class
and became one
of the first Black women in town
to hold a civil service job.
In 1940, Mamie married
soldier Louis Till,
and one year later,
their son, Emmett, was born.
In 1945, Mamie got word that
Private Till had died in Europe.
All she received
of his possessions
was a signet ring inscribed
with his initials, "L.T."
Emmett, her only child,
was four years old.
A childhood case of polio
left him with a stutter,
but by the time
he was a teenager,
Emmett Till had grown
into a cocky, self-assured boy
who loved to be the center
of attention.
HEARD:
When we first met,
we were in gym, uh,
in Mr. Long's gym period.
I remember Emmett raising
his shirt up to about his navel
and start making his belly roll.
Just waves of fat
(laughs)
rolling, and it
it just broke us up.
I mean,
the whole gym went crazy.
He was that kind of kid.
PARKER:
Anything going on, he's in
the middle of all all of it.
And he just loved to play ball.
He just loved jokes.
He would pay people
to tell him jokes.
If there was a group there,
Emmett was in front,
and he was the lively one.
He was the one that
everybody kind of looked to.
Natural-born leader.
(rock 'n' roll playing)
NARRATOR:
In June of 1955, Black Chicago
swung to a new kind of music
called rock 'n' roll.
A Supreme Court decision
had struck down school
segregation the year before.
Emmett finished seventh grade,
and in July, he turned 14.
COOKSEY:
I knew Emmett Till.
We went
to grammar school together.
And Emmett was a fun young man,
just like any other
young teenager.
The boys wore polyester pants,
crepe-soled shoes.
I would wear flared skirts
with the crinoline underneath.
You must have the crinoline.
And we were doing the bop
That's the bebop.
And we just danced and had fun.
And we were just
all good friends.
♪
NARRATOR:
In August, Emmett's great-uncle,
Mose Wright, visited Chicago
and invited Emmett
and his cousin Wheeler
home to Mississippi.
Before she let them go,
Mamie schooled the boys
on the ways of the South.
TILL:
I let them know that Mississippi
was not Chicago,
and when you go to Mississippi,
you're living by an entirely
different set of rules.
Uh, it is "yes, ma'am"
and "no, ma'am,"
"yes, sir" and "no, sir."
"And, Beau, if you see a white
woman coming down the street,
"you get off the sidewalk
and drop your head.
Don't even look at her."
The concern for Emmett
was that he could be
with his fun-loving,
free-spirited way of living,
he could get in trouble,
could have a lot of problems.
He was 14,
but he'd just turned 14.
He was just 13 a few weeks
before we went down there.
TILL:
He thought I was exaggerating,
which I was.
I was trying to exaggerate.
If I could, oh, go high enough,
I things could seek,
uh uh, soak into his head
that you have to be
very careful.
NARRATOR:
As Emmett packed his bags,
Mississippi was set to explode.
Two Black men
had recently been killed
for registering Black voters
and a push to implement the
new law on school desegregation
had whites, from the Delta to
the statehouse, spitting fire.
You are not going to permit
the N.A.A.C.P.
to take over your schools!
(cheering)
You are not going to permit
the N.A.A.C.P.
to control your state!
(cheering)
WINTER:
It was argued in coffee shops
all over the Deep South
that "If we give on this,
then we'll
"we'll start giving
on everything else.
"And the first thing you know,
"we won't have
a segregated society,
"and Black people
will be taking over
in this part of the country."
We are not going to permit
MOSES NEWSON:
A lot of the leadership
was, uh, going around
making outrageous threats
and, uh, claiming they weren't
going to obey the law
and that sort of thing.
Consequences was that almost
anything could happen to anybody
at any time down there.
NARRATOR:
On August 19,
Mamie gave Emmett
the ring that had belonged
to his father.
The next morning, Emmett
and his mother grabbed his bags
and rushed off to
the 63rd Street station.
TILL:
He was running up the steps
to try to make it to the train,
and I said, "Emmett" or
"Beau" I called him Beau
I said, "Where are you going?
"You haven't kissed me goodbye.
And how do I know
I'll ever see you again?"
And he looked at me
and he said, "Aw, Mama,"
he kind of scolded me
for saying something like that.
But he turned around,
he came back
and, uh, he kissed me goodbye.
And he said, "Here, take this."
He pulled his watch off
and gave it to me.
He said, "I won't need this
where I'm going."
I said, "What about your ring?"
He said, "Oh, I'm going to show
it off to the fellows."
And with that,
he was up the steps
and on his way
to get on the train.
(horn blaring)
♪
NARRATOR:
Emmett rode the Illinois Central
16 hours out of Chicago
to the Mississippi Delta.
PARKER:
We went to South
near the beginning
of cotton-picking time
Late August
And we picked cotton
for a half a day
and we would go swimming,
run the snakes out the river.
We had a lot of fun.
NARRATOR:
Emmett's family lived
on the outskirts of Money,
a whistle-stop town in the heart
of Delta cotton country.
The town of Money was one street
with maybe five or six stores,
but that's all,
just one one street.
Wasn't much,
wasn't really a town.
NARRATOR:
At one end of Money
was Bryant's Grocery,
which made a business
of selling candy to Black kids
and provisions to field hands
from nearby plantations.
Roy Bryant,
a 24-year-old ex-soldier,
and his wife, Carolyn,
owned the grocery
and not much else.
The Bryants lived
with their two boys
in cramped rooms
behind the store.
Roy's half-brother, J.W. Milam,
helped out around the grocery.
The 235-pound Milam
was a hard-drinking man
with a reputation
for being tough on anyone
who got in his way.
(insects buzzing, chittering)
On a steamy Wednesday afternoon,
Emmett and seven other teenagers
piled into Mose Wright's
old Ford
and headed to Bryant's Grocery.
PARKER:
The day that we went
to the store in Money,
uh, we were picking cotton,
uh, first half of the day,
and the second half,
because it was so hot,
my uncle drove the car
and we took off to Money
to get some refreshments,
just general things
you buy in a store.
NARRATOR:
Roy Bryant was out of town,
leaving his wife, Carolyn,
alone behind the counter
when Emmett
and his cousins pulled up.
Other customers
were sitting outside,
talking and playing checkers
in the cool of the shade.
One or two at a time,
the boys drifted into the store
and back out again
with a cold drink
or a piece of candy.
Then Emmett went in and bought
two cents' worth of bubble gum.
According to witnesses,
on his way out of the store,
Emmett turned to Carolyn Bryant
and whistled.
She stormed out.
PARKER:
We all got a-scared,
and someone said,
"She's going to get a pistol."
That's when we became afraid.
Said, "She's going to the car
to get a pistol."
And as she went to the car,
we all jumped in my uncle's car.
We were going pretty fast,
and dust is flying behind us.
And, of course,
Emmett Till begged us
not to tell my grandfather
what had took place.
And we didn't.
This was on a Wednesday,
and we didn't tell him
what had taken place.
Uh, so Wednesday went by,
Thursday went by, nothing,
Friday.
We forgot about it.
(crickets chirping)
WRIGHT (archival recording):
Sunday morning about 2:30,
I heard a voice at the door,
and it said,
"This is Mr. Bryant,"
and said they wanted the boy
that did the talk at Money.
And when I opened the door,
there was a man standing
with a pistol in one hand
and a flashlight
in the other one.
♪
PARKER:
It was like a nightmare.
I mean, it's
I mean, someone come
and stand over you
with a pistol in one hand
and a flashlight
and you're 16 years old,
uh, it's a terrifying
experience, very terrifying.
WRIGHT (in archival recording):
And so we marched around
through two rooms
and I found the boy
in the third room
in the bed with my baby boy
and they told him to get up
and put his clothes on.
NARRATOR:
Mose Wright pleaded
with the two men.
"He's only 14
and he's from up North.
"Why not give the boy
a whipping," Wright begged,
"and leave it at that?"
PARKER:
There were two in the next room,
my cousin and uncle,
they never woke up.
My Uncle Simmie did wake up,
but they told him
to go back to sleep.
He was 12 years old.
And I just said,
"Hell, I'm fixing to die."
NARRATOR:
J.W. Milam turned
to Mose Wright.
"How old are you, preacher?"
he asked.
"Sixty-four," Wright replied.
"You make any trouble,
you'll never live to be 65."
Near to the car
they asked a question,
"Is this the right one?"
And I heard a voice say, "Yes."
And they drove off
toward Money with him.
PARKER:
Nobody talked to anybody.
The house was as dark
as a thousand midnights.
You couldn't see.
And when they left,
I was still afraid
and so I'm waiting
for them to come back.
It was that Sunday morning,
early Sunday morning.
♪
(birds chirping)
HAMPTON:
I was, uh, playing
beside the road,
and I saw, uh, Mr uh, Milam
in the truck coming by,
and it had a had a cover with
it, what we called a tarpaulin.
And I heard somebody hollering
on the truck.
WILLIE REED:
I could hear all this beating
and I could hear this beating
and I could hear this crying,
and crying and beating,
and I'm saying to myself,
"They're beating
somebody up there."
I heard that beating
before I got to
even before I got to the barn.
I passed,
they still was beating,
they still
was beating, I can hear it.
Milam came out.
So when he said, uh,
"Did you hear anything?"
I saw him, he had khaki pants
on, had a green nylon shirt
and a .45 on his side.
So I said, "No,"
I said, "I ain't heard
anything," I said, "anything."
(birds chirping)
OUDIE BROWN:
I was coming through there
that morning.
Too Tight was out there washing
the truck out,
out washing J.W. Milam's truck
out.
I said, "Where all that blood
come from?"
He laughed.
The boy laughed,
that's what he did.
He said, "There's a shoe here.
There's one of his shoes here."
I said, "Who?"
That's the way I said it.
I said, "Who?"
"Emmett Till's shoe."
♪
NARRATOR:
In Chicago,
a desperate Mamie Till
notified the local newspapers
of Emmett's disappearance.
In Mississippi, the family
alerted the sheriff
and then began to search
for any sign of the boy
along riverbanks
and under bridges,
"Where Black folks always look,"
Emmett's uncle said,
"when something
like this happens."
The next day, Roy Bryant
was arrested for kidnapping.
J.W. Milam was at a store
in nearby Minter City
when the Leflore County sheriff
caught up with him.
Said, "J.W., I got a writ
for you."
He threw his head up
just like that.
He spoke of it again,
he went over it again.
He said, "I got a writ for you."
"Is you goin'?"
"Hell no."
"That's (no audio) you talkin'."
No longer than two hours,
the high sheriff come back.
The high sheriff come on
in there,
didn't even knock on no door
or nothing.
Walked in there and say,
"J.W. Milam, I come at you.
"I'm gonna carry you
dead or alive.
You about to get ready to go."
Hear?
♪
NARRATOR:
On August 31, three days after
Emmett Till had disappeared,
a boy fishing
in the Tallahatchie
noticed a body caught on a
gnarled root in the muddy water.
He informed Tallahatchie County
Sheriff Clarence Strider.
CLARENCE STRIDER, JR.:
My dad called me and asked me
did I have a boat in the river,
and I told him I did.
Then he said, "Well, we'll be
down there in a little while,"
and he sent deputies down here
to go with me
and we took the boat
and went up the river.
It was in a curve in a drift
and a foot was sticking up.
And we tore into the drift
and got to him
and, you know, got him out.
Then we carried him
up to the other landing
and put him in the hearse.
NARRATOR:
Emmett's body
had been weighed down
with a 75-pound cotton gin fan
tied around his neck
with barbed wire.
The boy was so badly beaten
that Mose Wright
could identify Emmett
only by his father's ring.
Mamie Till was in Chicago,
surrounded
by worried family and friends,
when she was told
that her only child was dead.
Those words were like arrows
sticking all over my body.
My eyes were so full of tears
until I couldn't see.
And when I began to make
the announcement, uh
that Emmett had been found,
uh and how he was found,
the whole house began
to scream and to cry.
And that's when I realized
that this was a load
that I was going
to have to carry.
I wouldn't get any help
carrying this load.
NARRATOR:
By the time Mamie received
her son's body back in Chicago,
two weeks after
she had kissed him goodbye,
Emmett's murder
was front-page news.
His body was taken
to a funeral home
owned by A.A. Rayner, who had
promised Mississippi authorities
that he would keep
the casket nailed shut.
When Mamie Till asked him
to open it up, Rayner refused.
TILL:
I asked him, "Mr. Rayner,
do you have a hammer?"
I said,
"I haven't signed anything
"and I haven't made
any promises,
and if you can't open those
box that box, I can."
We opened the casket.
There was a terrible odor
that came from the body
because the body had been in the
water and began to deteriorate.
Mr. Rayner was
he told the mother,
he said, "If I was you,
I wouldn't look at this body,
because this body is in
such a horrible condition."
She said, "Mr. Rayner,
I want to see my son."
And I decided then that
I would start at his feet
and work my way up,
maybe gathering strength
as I went.
I paused at his midsection,
because I knew he would not
want me looking at him.
But I saw enough
that I knew he was intact.
I kept on up until
I got to his chin,
and then I I was forced
to deal with his face.
I saw that his tongue
was choked out.
I noticed that the right eye was
lying on
midway his cheek.
I noticed that his nose
had been broken,
like somebody took
a meat chopper
and chopped his nose
in several places.
As I kept looking, I saw a hole,
which I presumed
was a bullet hole,
and I could look
through that hole
and see daylight
on the other side.
And I wondered,
was it necessary to shoot him?
Mr. Rayner asked me he said,
"Do you want me
to touch the body up?"
I said, "No, Mr. Rayner, let
the people see what I've seen."
I I was just willing
to bear it all.
I think everybody needed to know
what had happened
to Emmett Till.
♪
NARRATOR:
Mamie's decision would make
her son's death
a touchstone for a generation.
At a church on
the south side of Chicago,
Emmett Till's mutilated body
would be on display
for all to see.
COOKSEY:
It was on a Sunday afternoon.
I won't ever forget
It was a Sunday afternoon.
The church was very calm.
The line was very orderly.
I thought that pretty soon
the crowd would die down.
It looked like all of Chicago
was there.
CAISE:
Well, they brought
their children with them,
because Emmett was 14 years old.
And they wanted the younger kids
to see what happened to Emmett.
They were mad, they were angry.
COOKSEY:
And as we were led
into the church,
my girlfriends and myself,
we walked up to the casket
and it was covered with glass.
And we all looked down.
This was our friend laying,
looking like a monster.
TILL:
They said that
about one in every five
had to be assisted
out of the building.
They would just go into a faint.
I think Black people's reaction
was so visceral.
Everybody knew
we were under attack,
and that attack was symbolized
by the attack
on a 14-year-old boy.
PARKER:
As far as I was concerned,
that wasn't him there.
Yet at the same time,
as confusing as it may sound,
it was him.
But I didn't accept it.
I just in my mind,
I kept saying,
"I'll see him again," you know.
And I guess to me,
it didn't happen.
But it did happen.
♪
NARRATOR:
50,000 people in Chicago
had seen Emmett Till's corpse
with their own eyes.
When the Black magazine "Jet"
ran photos of the body,
Black Americans across
the country shuddered.
It was grotesque.
I mean, it was just
it blew my mind.
I couldn't sleep at night.
It was traumatic for me
for for months.
I mean, it it touched us all.
NARRATOR:
Mainstream newspapers
and magazines spread the story
of the 14-year-old Black boy
who'd been brutally killed
for whistling at a white woman.
JOURDAIN:
It stunned white America.
Most white Americans
at that time
were saying things such as
the Emmett Till murder
had happened back
in slavery times,
that these kinds of things
were not of their generation,
that they no longer happened
in America.
And this said to them clearly,
"Hey, it's right here.
It is now."
♪
NARRATOR:
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam
admitted having taken
Emmett Till,
but claimed they'd let him go.
Now, with the eyes of the nation
turning to Mississippi,
the state appointed a special
prosecutor and filed charges.
The federal indictment is that
they did willfully, unlawfully,
feloniously and of their
malice of forethought
kill and murder Emmett Till,
a human being.
NARRATOR:
Scores of reporters descended
on the Delta.
Television networks
chartered a plane
to send footage to New York
for the nightly news.
The Associated Press
fielded queries
from Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo.
The Till case had become a major
international news story.
Under the glare
of the spotlight,
white Mississippians
began to close ranks.
Local stores collected $10,000
in countertop jars
for Bryant and Milam.
Every lawyer in the county
joined their defense team.
WINTER:
People of
the socioeconomic level
of the two defendants
in this case
were obviously looked down on
by the more aristocratic whites,
almost with the same disdain
that they looked down
on on Blacks.
But they were still white folks.
And when push came to shove,
the the white community
rallied in support of them
against a
a young Black person
for whom they had
even greater disdain.
The atmosphere among whites
in Tallahatchie County
and other
the whole surrounding area
was one of absolute scorn
at the fact
that these men were being put
on trial for their lives.
And the cynicism was usually
couched in very crude jokes.
One of them was,
"Isn't that just like a nigger
"to swim across
the Tallahatchie River
with a gin fan around his neck?"
I can't understand
how a civilized mother
could put a dead body
of her child on public display.
I'm almost convinced that
the very beginning of this
was by a communistic front.
Well, sir, I'll tell you
right now
If he gets justice,
they'll turn him a-loose.
If I was on the grand jury,
that is what I would do.
NARRATOR:
Among African Americans,
there was outright fear.
"Too Tight" Collins,
who worked for J.W. Milam,
and had been seen washing blood
from Milam's truck, disappeared.
The message to Black people
was clear:
hide what you know,
hide even what you think,
or face the consequences.
REPORTER:
Young man,
do you think
these two men
should be indicted?
I really don't know, sir.
What do you mean,
you don't know?
I don't know whether
they should or not.
Have you studied the case by
reading the papers, perhaps?
Yes, sir.
And you don't know whether
they should be invited?
No, sir.
Indicted?
No, sir.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
NARRATOR:
On September 19,
less than three weeks
after Emmett's body was found,
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam's
trial for murder
opened in Sumner, Mississippi,
which touted itself as
"a good place to raise a boy."
The air in the courtroom,
a reporter wrote,
was "as heavy and oppressive
as the moss that hangs
from the cypress trees."
TILL:
In the courtroom,
they recorded 118 degrees,
and, of course,
there was no air conditioning.
They had the ceiling fans
that were only stirring
the air up,
making it hotter
when it reached your body.
NARRATOR:
On the first day of the trial,
presiding judge Curtis Swango
named the jury
all white men from Bryant
and Milam's home county.
PEARSON:
I remember looking
at the at that jury,
and even though I knew a good
many of the men
who were on the jury
and and they looked
mean to me.
I would have hated to have gone
up against any of those guys.
NARRATOR:
Tallahatchie County sheriff
and plantation owner
Clarence Strider
was responsible
for locating witnesses
and gathering evidence
against Bryant and Milam.
Sheriff Strider was a big, fat,
plain-talking,
obscene-talking sheriff
you would expect to find
in the South.
His actions at the trial
were more, I think, not
to so much to see justice
over what was going on,
but to be sure
that his courtroom
was totally segregated.
The man had laid it out that,
"We got 22 seats over here
for you white boys,
"and we got four seats
over here for you colored boys.
"We don't mix them down here.
"We ain't going to mix them,
and we don't intend to.
"You ain't going to be
with the white folks
"and the white folks
ain't going to be with you
"and y'all might be
Ain't going to be no love nest
between Black and white folk."
NARRATOR:
Strider consigned
Black reporters
and Detroit congressman
Charles Diggs
to a card table
on the sidelines.
Strider greeted them
as he passed
with a cheery, "Hello, niggers."
We never have any trouble,
until some of our southern
niggers go up north
and the N.A.A.C.P. talks to them
and they come back home.
If they would keep their nose
and mouths out of our business,
we would be able to do more
in enforcing the laws
of Tallahatchie County
and in Mississippi.
HERBERS:
The reaction of reporters
from out of the South
was one of just
absolute amazement.
They knew that there were
strange things going on
down in places like Sumner,
but they did not know it
would be quite like that.
They were really surprised
at at what they found.
At the same time, of course,
they wrote about it
with great relish
because it was a good story.
It had sex.
It had murder.
It had mystery.
NARRATOR:
When Mamie Till arrived,
she had to make her way
through an unsympathetic crowd
gathered on the courthouse lawn.
REPORTER:
What do you intend
to do here today?
To answer any questions
that might
that the attorneys might ask me
to answer, to the best
REPORTER:
How do you think that
how do you think
you could possibly be
a help to them?
I don't know just by answering
whatever questions
that they ask me.
I see.
REPORTER:
Do you have
any evidence
bearing on this case?
I do know that this is my son.
NARRATOR:
Mamie Till testified that the
body she'd examined and buried
was indeed her son.
In their cross-examination,
Bryant and Milam's attorneys
peppered her
with hostile questions,
and then presented
the main argument
for the defense:
the corpse pulled from
the Tallahatchie River
was not Emmett Till.
They summed up by saying,
"Isn't it true
that you and the N.A.A.C.P.
"got your heads together,
and you came down here
"and with their help,
you all dug up a body
"and you have claimed that body
to be your son?
"Isn't it true that your son
is in Detroit, Michigan,
with his grandfather right now?"
NARRATOR:
With Sheriff Strider
and courtroom sentiment
clearly on the side
of the defendants,
reporters began their own
desperate search for witnesses.
HAMPTON:
Black people wasn't speaking out
about the Emmett Till case
at that particular time,
because they knew that
it could happen to them.
The Blacks feared for their
for their lives
and for their family's lives,
because those white folks
were for real.
So it was just, you know,
like hush-hush, you know.
So I was told to keep my mouth
shut, and that's what I did.
NARRATOR:
Two days into the trial,
reporters got a lead on a young
sharecropper named Willie Reed,
who might be willing to talk.
REED:
I was in the cotton field
and I was picking
I was picking cotton,
picking cotton.
And I looked across the field,
and there was about seven
or eight peoples
coming across the field
towards me.
Was white and Black
coming that way.
And then they began
to question me about this here
"Did you see anything?"
So I told them what I saw.
NARRATOR:
Putting his life at risk, Willie
Reed agreed to step forward.
REED:
Well, when you walk
in that courtroom,
and you know what you
that you're going to testify,
then you look at all
these white folks
and everybody looking at you,
and they got their frowns
on their face and everything
You see them,
they be looking at you,
rolling their eyes
and looking at you.
Yeah.
White looking at you.
(laughs)
It was something.
NARRATOR:
Reed spoke in a voice
barely louder than a whisper.
He'd seen Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam
and one other white man
with Emmett Till early
that Sunday morning
and had heard
the sounds of a beating
coming from Milam's shed.
After delivering his testimony,
Reed was smuggled
out of Mississippi.
When he reached Chicago,
he was hospitalized
with a nervous breakdown.
♪
The prosecution's best witness
was Mose Wright,
who had clearly seen the men who
took Emmett Till from his home.
Wright had been in hiding since
the night of the kidnapping
and had been threatened
with death.
But there, in the searing heat
of a Delta courtroom,
the 64-year-old sharecropper
had his say.
WITHERS:
One of the attorneys asked,
"Do you know the man that came
to your house that night
to get Emmett Till
out of your house?"
NARRATOR:
Mose Wright stood and pointed
first at Roy Bryant,
then at J.W. Milam.
"Thar he," he said.
Wright later claimed
he could feel the blood boil
in hundreds of white people
in the courtroom.
But, he said, "I had decided
to tell it like it was."
NEWSON:
That was a dramatic moment.
That took an awful lot of
courage for him to get up there
and do what he did.
I think he had decided
that he was going to do it
no matter what happened.
NARRATOR:
After he testified,
Wright left his cotton
blooming in the field,
his old car sitting
at the station,
and slipped onto the train
to Chicago.
He would never again live
in Mississippi.
The trial drew to a close
after only five days.
In his summation,
the lead defense attorney
warned members of the jury
that their ancestors
would turn over in their graves
if Bryant and Milam
were found guilty.
"Every last Anglo-Saxon
one of you," he said,
"has the courage
to free these men."
As the jury retired,
the Black people who were
standing around the walls
began to ease out of the door.
I said, "It's time
for us to go."
Congressman Diggs said,
"What, and miss the verdict?"
I said, "Congressman,
this is one verdict
you don't want
to be present to hear."
NARRATOR:
The crowd in the courtroom
waited in the heat.
Reporters overheard
members of the jury
laughing and joking
in the jury room.
In just over an hour,
the jury returned.
NEWSCASTER:
In the Emmett Till murder trial,
the all-white jury has acquitted
the two white defendants
accused of killing
the 14-year-old Negro youth.
The jury foreman said
the deciding factor
was the state's failure
to prove the identity
of the body pulled from a river
near Sumner, Mississippi.
NARRATOR:
A juror later revealed
that the jury had stalled
"to make it look good.
"They wouldn't
have taken so long
to return to the courtroom,"
he said,
"if they hadn't stopped
to drink pop."
TILL:
The verdict came in
"not guilty."
You could hear guns firing.
I mean, it was almost like
a Fourth of July celebration,
or it was almost
as if the White Sox
had won the pennant
in the city of Chicago.
It was just, uh it was
just oh, it
It was a mess.
NARRATOR:
After the trial, Sheriff
Clarence Strider told reporters,
"I hope the Chicago niggers
and the N.A.A.C.P.
are satisfied."
People are used to doing things
normal around here.
(laughs)
And they just tried
to run the thing.
They thought they could run over
the judge and the sheriff
and everybody over there.
They thought that they,
you know, could just take over,
but they didn't.
REPORTER:
How do you folks feel
now that it's all over?
Roy, how about you?
I'm just glad it's over with.
REPORTER:
J.W.?
I am, too.
And Mrs. Bryant?
I feel fine.
And how about you,
Mrs. Milam?
Fine.
NARRATOR:
Reports of the acquittal
made front-page headlines
across the United States
and set off
an international firestorm.
"The life of a Negro
in Mississippi,"
one European paper observed,
"is not worth a whistle."
From Boston to Los Angeles,
Black people
packed meeting halls
and spilled into the streets
to hear Mamie Till
tell her story.
TILL:
And what I saw
was a shame before God and man.
And the way the jury chose to
believe the ridiculous stories
of the defense attorneys.
I I just can't go into detail
to tell you
the silly things,
the stupid things
that were brought up
as probabilities,
and they swallowed it
like a fish swallows a hook.
Just anything, just any excuse
to acquit these two men.
NARRATOR:
Protected from
further prosecution,
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam
sold their story
to a reporter from
"Look" magazine for $4,000.
Their account appeared just
four months after the acquittal.
READER:
"We took him and we was
just going to whip him,
scare some sense into him."
"Back of the house
is a tool shed,
"two rooms about 12 feet square.
"We walked him in there
"and took turns smashing him
across the head with a .45
first my brother, and then me."
"We put him back in the truck.
We knew what we was
going to do."
"There's a spot about a mile
and a half from the bridge
"where the banks are steep.
"It was just the spot.
"I held up the gun.
"I fired, and the Chicago boy
twisted around
and caught it right in the ear."
"We tied the gin fan to his neck
with barbed wire
"and rolled his body
into 20 feet of muddy water.
"For three hours that morning,
"we had a big old fire
in the yard.
"Damn if that nigger
didn't have crepe-soled shoes.
You know how hard
they are to burn?"
NARRATOR:
If there were others involved,
as Willie Reed and Mose Wright
had testified under oath,
Milam and Bryant
did not name them.
Mamie Till went to Washington
to press the federal government
to reopen the case.
Despite thousands of letters
protesting Mississippi's
handling of the murder,
President Dwight Eisenhower
and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
ruled out
a federal investigation.
Eisenhower didn't even answer
Mamie Till's telegram.
♪
NARRATOR:
No one ever did time
for the killing
of the 14 year-old Black boy
from Chicago.
♪
But his murder, and the trial
and acquittal of his killers,
sent a powerful message:
If change was going to come,
people would have to put
themselves on the line.
Contributions to civil rights
groups soared.
And 100 days after the death
of Emmett Till,
Rosa Parks refused to give up
her seat to a white person,
and the Montgomery bus boycott
began.
When people saw what
had happened to my son,
men stood up who had
never stood up before.
People became vocal
who had never vocalized before.
Emmett's death was the opening
of the Civil Rights Movement.
He was the sacrificial lamb
of the movement.
♪
PEARSON:
I do believe that nationally,
or at least across the South,
the Emmett Till trial and the
and the result of that trial
somehow spurred
the Civil Rights Movement,
as if this was either the last
straw or maybe it was the spark.
♪
People were thoroughly disgusted
at what happened
in that situation.
And it made an awful lot
of people realize
that they themselves had to get
involved and do something.
♪
It was just a magnificent
reaction to a very ugly thing
that had taken place
in this country.
♪
♪
♪
♪
(birds chirping)
♪
REPORTER (on tape):
This is the muddy, backwoods
Tallahatchie River,
where a weighted body was found,
alleged to be that
of young Emmett Till.
MAMIE TILL:
I saw a hole,
which I presumed
was a bullet hole,
and I could look
through that hole
and see daylight
on the other side.
And I wondered,
"Was it necessary to shoot him?"
Here is Money, Mississippi,
the home of Roy Bryant.
It was here that the
Chicago Negro boy Emmett Till
is alleged to have paid
unwelcome attention
to Roy Bryant's
most attractive wife.
MAN:
When white women
was on the streets,
you had to get off
of the street.
That was a way of life,
and all a white woman had to say
was, "That nigger kind of
looked at me or sassed me."
So we're talking
about a way of life that, uh,
in this part of the country,
that was enforced by law.
REPORTER:
This was the home
of Mose Wright.
It was from this shack the state
alleges Emmett Till was taken
by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam.
WHEELER PARKER:
The house was as dark
as a thousand midnights.
You couldn't see.
It was like a nightmare.
I mean I mean, if
someone come and stand over you
with a pistol in one hand
and a flashlight
and you're 16 years old, uh,
this was a terrifying
experience.
WILLIAM WINTER:
The Till case held the
whole system up for inspection
by the rest of the country
and by the rest of the world.
It was the beginning of the
focusing on the problems, uh,
between the races
in the deep South
that culminated in the ultimate
civil rights battles
of the of
of the rest of the '50s
and and into the '60s.
ROSE JOURDAIN:
I think Black people's reaction
was so visceral
and I think it was probably,
more than anything else
in terms of the mass
Civil Rights Movement,
the spark
that that launched it.
Everybody knew
we were under attack
and that attack
was symbolized by the attack
on a 14-year-old boy.
♪
WINTER:
When one drives
through the Loess Hills
and looks out at the sweep
of those fields below
Flat as a pancake
as far as the eye can see
It's breathtaking.
Those who have not been
to the Delta, uh,
find themselves gasping
at the sight
as they come over
the Loess Hills
and see that expanse
of flat agricultural land.
NARRATOR:
It was the summer of 1955
when Emmett Till arrived
in Mississippi from Chicago.
His family had worked cotton
for generations,
but this trip would be Emmett's
introduction to the Delta,
known as the most southern place
on earth.
FILM NARRATOR:
This is Mississippi.
Today a situation exists
in Mississippi
that is unlike the situation
in most states in the nation.
In some sections of the state,
there is a preponderance
of colored citizens.
This situation
has brought problems,
it has created challenges,
but most important of all,
it has inspired a social system
to meet the challenge.
In every community
in Mississippi,
there is segregation
of the races.
Drinking fountains
are segregated.
Restrooms are segregated.
The local theater is segregated.
Negroes sit in the balcony.
You never in any way said
anything that they didn't like.
You didn't disagree with them
on a whole.
You just didn't do that.
If a white person
did something to you,
you had no recourse at all.
People disappeared.
We don't know
what happened to them.
They just disappeared.
♪
NARRATOR:
In the 75 years before Emmett
Till set foot in Mississippi,
more than 500 Black people
had been lynched in the state.
Most were men
who had been accused
of associating with white women.
PEARSON:
Part of that culture
was that the women
were put on pedestals
and they were, uh,
some sort of um
idealization of whatever
it means
to be woman or to be female.
There was an almost, uh,
irrational fear of Black men,
uh, as if every Black man
was ready to attack
or rape a white woman
if you gave them the chance.
I can remember
when my father died,
Sammy the Black man
who worked for him was there
and I threw my arms
around his neck,
and he pulled away from me.
He could not have that,
you know,
physical show of affection,
of sharing grief or whatever.
Black men did not touch
white women.
♪
WINTER:
Many white southerners, perhaps
most deep South southerners,
had convinced themselves
that, uh, Black people
were relatively happy
in their in their segregated
relationships with white people.
Most white people, I think,
had convinced themselves
that this was
a defensible social system
in which they lived.
WITHERS:
I had a cousin
that was living in Mississippi
and was walking down
the sidewalk
down near downtown in Tunica
and didn't get off the sidewalk,
and the man slapped him
and knocked him off
the sidewalk.
And he got up.
Instead of killing the white man
like he wanted,
he just started walking
and never stopped
until he got to Memphis
and never stopped
until he got up to Chicago.
MAN (on record):
Home ♪
Baby, don't you want to go? ♪
NARRATOR:
Hundreds of thousands
of Black people fled Mississippi
for Chicago in the years
between the world wars.
One-way train fare of $11.10
took them to a different world.
MAN:
To my sweet home Chicago. ♪
NARRATOR:
Neighborhoods and schools
were segregated,
but the city offered
a kind of freedom
Black Mississippians
could only dream about.
TILL:
Chicago was a land of promise
and they thought that milk
and honey was everywhere.
And so it was a lot
of excitement leaving the South,
leaving the cotton fields.
You could hold your head up
in Chicago.
MAN:
To my sweet home ♪
NARRATOR:
Mamie Carthan arrived in Chicago
at the age of two.
An only child, young Mamie
was the hope of her family
of former sharecroppers.
She graduated from high school
at the top of her class
and became one
of the first Black women in town
to hold a civil service job.
In 1940, Mamie married
soldier Louis Till,
and one year later,
their son, Emmett, was born.
In 1945, Mamie got word that
Private Till had died in Europe.
All she received
of his possessions
was a signet ring inscribed
with his initials, "L.T."
Emmett, her only child,
was four years old.
A childhood case of polio
left him with a stutter,
but by the time
he was a teenager,
Emmett Till had grown
into a cocky, self-assured boy
who loved to be the center
of attention.
HEARD:
When we first met,
we were in gym, uh,
in Mr. Long's gym period.
I remember Emmett raising
his shirt up to about his navel
and start making his belly roll.
Just waves of fat
(laughs)
rolling, and it
it just broke us up.
I mean,
the whole gym went crazy.
He was that kind of kid.
PARKER:
Anything going on, he's in
the middle of all all of it.
And he just loved to play ball.
He just loved jokes.
He would pay people
to tell him jokes.
If there was a group there,
Emmett was in front,
and he was the lively one.
He was the one that
everybody kind of looked to.
Natural-born leader.
(rock 'n' roll playing)
NARRATOR:
In June of 1955, Black Chicago
swung to a new kind of music
called rock 'n' roll.
A Supreme Court decision
had struck down school
segregation the year before.
Emmett finished seventh grade,
and in July, he turned 14.
COOKSEY:
I knew Emmett Till.
We went
to grammar school together.
And Emmett was a fun young man,
just like any other
young teenager.
The boys wore polyester pants,
crepe-soled shoes.
I would wear flared skirts
with the crinoline underneath.
You must have the crinoline.
And we were doing the bop
That's the bebop.
And we just danced and had fun.
And we were just
all good friends.
♪
NARRATOR:
In August, Emmett's great-uncle,
Mose Wright, visited Chicago
and invited Emmett
and his cousin Wheeler
home to Mississippi.
Before she let them go,
Mamie schooled the boys
on the ways of the South.
TILL:
I let them know that Mississippi
was not Chicago,
and when you go to Mississippi,
you're living by an entirely
different set of rules.
Uh, it is "yes, ma'am"
and "no, ma'am,"
"yes, sir" and "no, sir."
"And, Beau, if you see a white
woman coming down the street,
"you get off the sidewalk
and drop your head.
Don't even look at her."
The concern for Emmett
was that he could be
with his fun-loving,
free-spirited way of living,
he could get in trouble,
could have a lot of problems.
He was 14,
but he'd just turned 14.
He was just 13 a few weeks
before we went down there.
TILL:
He thought I was exaggerating,
which I was.
I was trying to exaggerate.
If I could, oh, go high enough,
I things could seek,
uh uh, soak into his head
that you have to be
very careful.
NARRATOR:
As Emmett packed his bags,
Mississippi was set to explode.
Two Black men
had recently been killed
for registering Black voters
and a push to implement the
new law on school desegregation
had whites, from the Delta to
the statehouse, spitting fire.
You are not going to permit
the N.A.A.C.P.
to take over your schools!
(cheering)
You are not going to permit
the N.A.A.C.P.
to control your state!
(cheering)
WINTER:
It was argued in coffee shops
all over the Deep South
that "If we give on this,
then we'll
"we'll start giving
on everything else.
"And the first thing you know,
"we won't have
a segregated society,
"and Black people
will be taking over
in this part of the country."
We are not going to permit
MOSES NEWSON:
A lot of the leadership
was, uh, going around
making outrageous threats
and, uh, claiming they weren't
going to obey the law
and that sort of thing.
Consequences was that almost
anything could happen to anybody
at any time down there.
NARRATOR:
On August 19,
Mamie gave Emmett
the ring that had belonged
to his father.
The next morning, Emmett
and his mother grabbed his bags
and rushed off to
the 63rd Street station.
TILL:
He was running up the steps
to try to make it to the train,
and I said, "Emmett" or
"Beau" I called him Beau
I said, "Where are you going?
"You haven't kissed me goodbye.
And how do I know
I'll ever see you again?"
And he looked at me
and he said, "Aw, Mama,"
he kind of scolded me
for saying something like that.
But he turned around,
he came back
and, uh, he kissed me goodbye.
And he said, "Here, take this."
He pulled his watch off
and gave it to me.
He said, "I won't need this
where I'm going."
I said, "What about your ring?"
He said, "Oh, I'm going to show
it off to the fellows."
And with that,
he was up the steps
and on his way
to get on the train.
(horn blaring)
♪
NARRATOR:
Emmett rode the Illinois Central
16 hours out of Chicago
to the Mississippi Delta.
PARKER:
We went to South
near the beginning
of cotton-picking time
Late August
And we picked cotton
for a half a day
and we would go swimming,
run the snakes out the river.
We had a lot of fun.
NARRATOR:
Emmett's family lived
on the outskirts of Money,
a whistle-stop town in the heart
of Delta cotton country.
The town of Money was one street
with maybe five or six stores,
but that's all,
just one one street.
Wasn't much,
wasn't really a town.
NARRATOR:
At one end of Money
was Bryant's Grocery,
which made a business
of selling candy to Black kids
and provisions to field hands
from nearby plantations.
Roy Bryant,
a 24-year-old ex-soldier,
and his wife, Carolyn,
owned the grocery
and not much else.
The Bryants lived
with their two boys
in cramped rooms
behind the store.
Roy's half-brother, J.W. Milam,
helped out around the grocery.
The 235-pound Milam
was a hard-drinking man
with a reputation
for being tough on anyone
who got in his way.
(insects buzzing, chittering)
On a steamy Wednesday afternoon,
Emmett and seven other teenagers
piled into Mose Wright's
old Ford
and headed to Bryant's Grocery.
PARKER:
The day that we went
to the store in Money,
uh, we were picking cotton,
uh, first half of the day,
and the second half,
because it was so hot,
my uncle drove the car
and we took off to Money
to get some refreshments,
just general things
you buy in a store.
NARRATOR:
Roy Bryant was out of town,
leaving his wife, Carolyn,
alone behind the counter
when Emmett
and his cousins pulled up.
Other customers
were sitting outside,
talking and playing checkers
in the cool of the shade.
One or two at a time,
the boys drifted into the store
and back out again
with a cold drink
or a piece of candy.
Then Emmett went in and bought
two cents' worth of bubble gum.
According to witnesses,
on his way out of the store,
Emmett turned to Carolyn Bryant
and whistled.
She stormed out.
PARKER:
We all got a-scared,
and someone said,
"She's going to get a pistol."
That's when we became afraid.
Said, "She's going to the car
to get a pistol."
And as she went to the car,
we all jumped in my uncle's car.
We were going pretty fast,
and dust is flying behind us.
And, of course,
Emmett Till begged us
not to tell my grandfather
what had took place.
And we didn't.
This was on a Wednesday,
and we didn't tell him
what had taken place.
Uh, so Wednesday went by,
Thursday went by, nothing,
Friday.
We forgot about it.
(crickets chirping)
WRIGHT (archival recording):
Sunday morning about 2:30,
I heard a voice at the door,
and it said,
"This is Mr. Bryant,"
and said they wanted the boy
that did the talk at Money.
And when I opened the door,
there was a man standing
with a pistol in one hand
and a flashlight
in the other one.
♪
PARKER:
It was like a nightmare.
I mean, it's
I mean, someone come
and stand over you
with a pistol in one hand
and a flashlight
and you're 16 years old,
uh, it's a terrifying
experience, very terrifying.
WRIGHT (in archival recording):
And so we marched around
through two rooms
and I found the boy
in the third room
in the bed with my baby boy
and they told him to get up
and put his clothes on.
NARRATOR:
Mose Wright pleaded
with the two men.
"He's only 14
and he's from up North.
"Why not give the boy
a whipping," Wright begged,
"and leave it at that?"
PARKER:
There were two in the next room,
my cousin and uncle,
they never woke up.
My Uncle Simmie did wake up,
but they told him
to go back to sleep.
He was 12 years old.
And I just said,
"Hell, I'm fixing to die."
NARRATOR:
J.W. Milam turned
to Mose Wright.
"How old are you, preacher?"
he asked.
"Sixty-four," Wright replied.
"You make any trouble,
you'll never live to be 65."
Near to the car
they asked a question,
"Is this the right one?"
And I heard a voice say, "Yes."
And they drove off
toward Money with him.
PARKER:
Nobody talked to anybody.
The house was as dark
as a thousand midnights.
You couldn't see.
And when they left,
I was still afraid
and so I'm waiting
for them to come back.
It was that Sunday morning,
early Sunday morning.
♪
(birds chirping)
HAMPTON:
I was, uh, playing
beside the road,
and I saw, uh, Mr uh, Milam
in the truck coming by,
and it had a had a cover with
it, what we called a tarpaulin.
And I heard somebody hollering
on the truck.
WILLIE REED:
I could hear all this beating
and I could hear this beating
and I could hear this crying,
and crying and beating,
and I'm saying to myself,
"They're beating
somebody up there."
I heard that beating
before I got to
even before I got to the barn.
I passed,
they still was beating,
they still
was beating, I can hear it.
Milam came out.
So when he said, uh,
"Did you hear anything?"
I saw him, he had khaki pants
on, had a green nylon shirt
and a .45 on his side.
So I said, "No,"
I said, "I ain't heard
anything," I said, "anything."
(birds chirping)
OUDIE BROWN:
I was coming through there
that morning.
Too Tight was out there washing
the truck out,
out washing J.W. Milam's truck
out.
I said, "Where all that blood
come from?"
He laughed.
The boy laughed,
that's what he did.
He said, "There's a shoe here.
There's one of his shoes here."
I said, "Who?"
That's the way I said it.
I said, "Who?"
"Emmett Till's shoe."
♪
NARRATOR:
In Chicago,
a desperate Mamie Till
notified the local newspapers
of Emmett's disappearance.
In Mississippi, the family
alerted the sheriff
and then began to search
for any sign of the boy
along riverbanks
and under bridges,
"Where Black folks always look,"
Emmett's uncle said,
"when something
like this happens."
The next day, Roy Bryant
was arrested for kidnapping.
J.W. Milam was at a store
in nearby Minter City
when the Leflore County sheriff
caught up with him.
Said, "J.W., I got a writ
for you."
He threw his head up
just like that.
He spoke of it again,
he went over it again.
He said, "I got a writ for you."
"Is you goin'?"
"Hell no."
"That's (no audio) you talkin'."
No longer than two hours,
the high sheriff come back.
The high sheriff come on
in there,
didn't even knock on no door
or nothing.
Walked in there and say,
"J.W. Milam, I come at you.
"I'm gonna carry you
dead or alive.
You about to get ready to go."
Hear?
♪
NARRATOR:
On August 31, three days after
Emmett Till had disappeared,
a boy fishing
in the Tallahatchie
noticed a body caught on a
gnarled root in the muddy water.
He informed Tallahatchie County
Sheriff Clarence Strider.
CLARENCE STRIDER, JR.:
My dad called me and asked me
did I have a boat in the river,
and I told him I did.
Then he said, "Well, we'll be
down there in a little while,"
and he sent deputies down here
to go with me
and we took the boat
and went up the river.
It was in a curve in a drift
and a foot was sticking up.
And we tore into the drift
and got to him
and, you know, got him out.
Then we carried him
up to the other landing
and put him in the hearse.
NARRATOR:
Emmett's body
had been weighed down
with a 75-pound cotton gin fan
tied around his neck
with barbed wire.
The boy was so badly beaten
that Mose Wright
could identify Emmett
only by his father's ring.
Mamie Till was in Chicago,
surrounded
by worried family and friends,
when she was told
that her only child was dead.
Those words were like arrows
sticking all over my body.
My eyes were so full of tears
until I couldn't see.
And when I began to make
the announcement, uh
that Emmett had been found,
uh and how he was found,
the whole house began
to scream and to cry.
And that's when I realized
that this was a load
that I was going
to have to carry.
I wouldn't get any help
carrying this load.
NARRATOR:
By the time Mamie received
her son's body back in Chicago,
two weeks after
she had kissed him goodbye,
Emmett's murder
was front-page news.
His body was taken
to a funeral home
owned by A.A. Rayner, who had
promised Mississippi authorities
that he would keep
the casket nailed shut.
When Mamie Till asked him
to open it up, Rayner refused.
TILL:
I asked him, "Mr. Rayner,
do you have a hammer?"
I said,
"I haven't signed anything
"and I haven't made
any promises,
and if you can't open those
box that box, I can."
We opened the casket.
There was a terrible odor
that came from the body
because the body had been in the
water and began to deteriorate.
Mr. Rayner was
he told the mother,
he said, "If I was you,
I wouldn't look at this body,
because this body is in
such a horrible condition."
She said, "Mr. Rayner,
I want to see my son."
And I decided then that
I would start at his feet
and work my way up,
maybe gathering strength
as I went.
I paused at his midsection,
because I knew he would not
want me looking at him.
But I saw enough
that I knew he was intact.
I kept on up until
I got to his chin,
and then I I was forced
to deal with his face.
I saw that his tongue
was choked out.
I noticed that the right eye was
lying on
midway his cheek.
I noticed that his nose
had been broken,
like somebody took
a meat chopper
and chopped his nose
in several places.
As I kept looking, I saw a hole,
which I presumed
was a bullet hole,
and I could look
through that hole
and see daylight
on the other side.
And I wondered,
was it necessary to shoot him?
Mr. Rayner asked me he said,
"Do you want me
to touch the body up?"
I said, "No, Mr. Rayner, let
the people see what I've seen."
I I was just willing
to bear it all.
I think everybody needed to know
what had happened
to Emmett Till.
♪
NARRATOR:
Mamie's decision would make
her son's death
a touchstone for a generation.
At a church on
the south side of Chicago,
Emmett Till's mutilated body
would be on display
for all to see.
COOKSEY:
It was on a Sunday afternoon.
I won't ever forget
It was a Sunday afternoon.
The church was very calm.
The line was very orderly.
I thought that pretty soon
the crowd would die down.
It looked like all of Chicago
was there.
CAISE:
Well, they brought
their children with them,
because Emmett was 14 years old.
And they wanted the younger kids
to see what happened to Emmett.
They were mad, they were angry.
COOKSEY:
And as we were led
into the church,
my girlfriends and myself,
we walked up to the casket
and it was covered with glass.
And we all looked down.
This was our friend laying,
looking like a monster.
TILL:
They said that
about one in every five
had to be assisted
out of the building.
They would just go into a faint.
I think Black people's reaction
was so visceral.
Everybody knew
we were under attack,
and that attack was symbolized
by the attack
on a 14-year-old boy.
PARKER:
As far as I was concerned,
that wasn't him there.
Yet at the same time,
as confusing as it may sound,
it was him.
But I didn't accept it.
I just in my mind,
I kept saying,
"I'll see him again," you know.
And I guess to me,
it didn't happen.
But it did happen.
♪
NARRATOR:
50,000 people in Chicago
had seen Emmett Till's corpse
with their own eyes.
When the Black magazine "Jet"
ran photos of the body,
Black Americans across
the country shuddered.
It was grotesque.
I mean, it was just
it blew my mind.
I couldn't sleep at night.
It was traumatic for me
for for months.
I mean, it it touched us all.
NARRATOR:
Mainstream newspapers
and magazines spread the story
of the 14-year-old Black boy
who'd been brutally killed
for whistling at a white woman.
JOURDAIN:
It stunned white America.
Most white Americans
at that time
were saying things such as
the Emmett Till murder
had happened back
in slavery times,
that these kinds of things
were not of their generation,
that they no longer happened
in America.
And this said to them clearly,
"Hey, it's right here.
It is now."
♪
NARRATOR:
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam
admitted having taken
Emmett Till,
but claimed they'd let him go.
Now, with the eyes of the nation
turning to Mississippi,
the state appointed a special
prosecutor and filed charges.
The federal indictment is that
they did willfully, unlawfully,
feloniously and of their
malice of forethought
kill and murder Emmett Till,
a human being.
NARRATOR:
Scores of reporters descended
on the Delta.
Television networks
chartered a plane
to send footage to New York
for the nightly news.
The Associated Press
fielded queries
from Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo.
The Till case had become a major
international news story.
Under the glare
of the spotlight,
white Mississippians
began to close ranks.
Local stores collected $10,000
in countertop jars
for Bryant and Milam.
Every lawyer in the county
joined their defense team.
WINTER:
People of
the socioeconomic level
of the two defendants
in this case
were obviously looked down on
by the more aristocratic whites,
almost with the same disdain
that they looked down
on on Blacks.
But they were still white folks.
And when push came to shove,
the the white community
rallied in support of them
against a
a young Black person
for whom they had
even greater disdain.
The atmosphere among whites
in Tallahatchie County
and other
the whole surrounding area
was one of absolute scorn
at the fact
that these men were being put
on trial for their lives.
And the cynicism was usually
couched in very crude jokes.
One of them was,
"Isn't that just like a nigger
"to swim across
the Tallahatchie River
with a gin fan around his neck?"
I can't understand
how a civilized mother
could put a dead body
of her child on public display.
I'm almost convinced that
the very beginning of this
was by a communistic front.
Well, sir, I'll tell you
right now
If he gets justice,
they'll turn him a-loose.
If I was on the grand jury,
that is what I would do.
NARRATOR:
Among African Americans,
there was outright fear.
"Too Tight" Collins,
who worked for J.W. Milam,
and had been seen washing blood
from Milam's truck, disappeared.
The message to Black people
was clear:
hide what you know,
hide even what you think,
or face the consequences.
REPORTER:
Young man,
do you think
these two men
should be indicted?
I really don't know, sir.
What do you mean,
you don't know?
I don't know whether
they should or not.
Have you studied the case by
reading the papers, perhaps?
Yes, sir.
And you don't know whether
they should be invited?
No, sir.
Indicted?
No, sir.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
NARRATOR:
On September 19,
less than three weeks
after Emmett's body was found,
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam's
trial for murder
opened in Sumner, Mississippi,
which touted itself as
"a good place to raise a boy."
The air in the courtroom,
a reporter wrote,
was "as heavy and oppressive
as the moss that hangs
from the cypress trees."
TILL:
In the courtroom,
they recorded 118 degrees,
and, of course,
there was no air conditioning.
They had the ceiling fans
that were only stirring
the air up,
making it hotter
when it reached your body.
NARRATOR:
On the first day of the trial,
presiding judge Curtis Swango
named the jury
all white men from Bryant
and Milam's home county.
PEARSON:
I remember looking
at the at that jury,
and even though I knew a good
many of the men
who were on the jury
and and they looked
mean to me.
I would have hated to have gone
up against any of those guys.
NARRATOR:
Tallahatchie County sheriff
and plantation owner
Clarence Strider
was responsible
for locating witnesses
and gathering evidence
against Bryant and Milam.
Sheriff Strider was a big, fat,
plain-talking,
obscene-talking sheriff
you would expect to find
in the South.
His actions at the trial
were more, I think, not
to so much to see justice
over what was going on,
but to be sure
that his courtroom
was totally segregated.
The man had laid it out that,
"We got 22 seats over here
for you white boys,
"and we got four seats
over here for you colored boys.
"We don't mix them down here.
"We ain't going to mix them,
and we don't intend to.
"You ain't going to be
with the white folks
"and the white folks
ain't going to be with you
"and y'all might be
Ain't going to be no love nest
between Black and white folk."
NARRATOR:
Strider consigned
Black reporters
and Detroit congressman
Charles Diggs
to a card table
on the sidelines.
Strider greeted them
as he passed
with a cheery, "Hello, niggers."
We never have any trouble,
until some of our southern
niggers go up north
and the N.A.A.C.P. talks to them
and they come back home.
If they would keep their nose
and mouths out of our business,
we would be able to do more
in enforcing the laws
of Tallahatchie County
and in Mississippi.
HERBERS:
The reaction of reporters
from out of the South
was one of just
absolute amazement.
They knew that there were
strange things going on
down in places like Sumner,
but they did not know it
would be quite like that.
They were really surprised
at at what they found.
At the same time, of course,
they wrote about it
with great relish
because it was a good story.
It had sex.
It had murder.
It had mystery.
NARRATOR:
When Mamie Till arrived,
she had to make her way
through an unsympathetic crowd
gathered on the courthouse lawn.
REPORTER:
What do you intend
to do here today?
To answer any questions
that might
that the attorneys might ask me
to answer, to the best
REPORTER:
How do you think that
how do you think
you could possibly be
a help to them?
I don't know just by answering
whatever questions
that they ask me.
I see.
REPORTER:
Do you have
any evidence
bearing on this case?
I do know that this is my son.
NARRATOR:
Mamie Till testified that the
body she'd examined and buried
was indeed her son.
In their cross-examination,
Bryant and Milam's attorneys
peppered her
with hostile questions,
and then presented
the main argument
for the defense:
the corpse pulled from
the Tallahatchie River
was not Emmett Till.
They summed up by saying,
"Isn't it true
that you and the N.A.A.C.P.
"got your heads together,
and you came down here
"and with their help,
you all dug up a body
"and you have claimed that body
to be your son?
"Isn't it true that your son
is in Detroit, Michigan,
with his grandfather right now?"
NARRATOR:
With Sheriff Strider
and courtroom sentiment
clearly on the side
of the defendants,
reporters began their own
desperate search for witnesses.
HAMPTON:
Black people wasn't speaking out
about the Emmett Till case
at that particular time,
because they knew that
it could happen to them.
The Blacks feared for their
for their lives
and for their family's lives,
because those white folks
were for real.
So it was just, you know,
like hush-hush, you know.
So I was told to keep my mouth
shut, and that's what I did.
NARRATOR:
Two days into the trial,
reporters got a lead on a young
sharecropper named Willie Reed,
who might be willing to talk.
REED:
I was in the cotton field
and I was picking
I was picking cotton,
picking cotton.
And I looked across the field,
and there was about seven
or eight peoples
coming across the field
towards me.
Was white and Black
coming that way.
And then they began
to question me about this here
"Did you see anything?"
So I told them what I saw.
NARRATOR:
Putting his life at risk, Willie
Reed agreed to step forward.
REED:
Well, when you walk
in that courtroom,
and you know what you
that you're going to testify,
then you look at all
these white folks
and everybody looking at you,
and they got their frowns
on their face and everything
You see them,
they be looking at you,
rolling their eyes
and looking at you.
Yeah.
White looking at you.
(laughs)
It was something.
NARRATOR:
Reed spoke in a voice
barely louder than a whisper.
He'd seen Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam
and one other white man
with Emmett Till early
that Sunday morning
and had heard
the sounds of a beating
coming from Milam's shed.
After delivering his testimony,
Reed was smuggled
out of Mississippi.
When he reached Chicago,
he was hospitalized
with a nervous breakdown.
♪
The prosecution's best witness
was Mose Wright,
who had clearly seen the men who
took Emmett Till from his home.
Wright had been in hiding since
the night of the kidnapping
and had been threatened
with death.
But there, in the searing heat
of a Delta courtroom,
the 64-year-old sharecropper
had his say.
WITHERS:
One of the attorneys asked,
"Do you know the man that came
to your house that night
to get Emmett Till
out of your house?"
NARRATOR:
Mose Wright stood and pointed
first at Roy Bryant,
then at J.W. Milam.
"Thar he," he said.
Wright later claimed
he could feel the blood boil
in hundreds of white people
in the courtroom.
But, he said, "I had decided
to tell it like it was."
NEWSON:
That was a dramatic moment.
That took an awful lot of
courage for him to get up there
and do what he did.
I think he had decided
that he was going to do it
no matter what happened.
NARRATOR:
After he testified,
Wright left his cotton
blooming in the field,
his old car sitting
at the station,
and slipped onto the train
to Chicago.
He would never again live
in Mississippi.
The trial drew to a close
after only five days.
In his summation,
the lead defense attorney
warned members of the jury
that their ancestors
would turn over in their graves
if Bryant and Milam
were found guilty.
"Every last Anglo-Saxon
one of you," he said,
"has the courage
to free these men."
As the jury retired,
the Black people who were
standing around the walls
began to ease out of the door.
I said, "It's time
for us to go."
Congressman Diggs said,
"What, and miss the verdict?"
I said, "Congressman,
this is one verdict
you don't want
to be present to hear."
NARRATOR:
The crowd in the courtroom
waited in the heat.
Reporters overheard
members of the jury
laughing and joking
in the jury room.
In just over an hour,
the jury returned.
NEWSCASTER:
In the Emmett Till murder trial,
the all-white jury has acquitted
the two white defendants
accused of killing
the 14-year-old Negro youth.
The jury foreman said
the deciding factor
was the state's failure
to prove the identity
of the body pulled from a river
near Sumner, Mississippi.
NARRATOR:
A juror later revealed
that the jury had stalled
"to make it look good.
"They wouldn't
have taken so long
to return to the courtroom,"
he said,
"if they hadn't stopped
to drink pop."
TILL:
The verdict came in
"not guilty."
You could hear guns firing.
I mean, it was almost like
a Fourth of July celebration,
or it was almost
as if the White Sox
had won the pennant
in the city of Chicago.
It was just, uh it was
just oh, it
It was a mess.
NARRATOR:
After the trial, Sheriff
Clarence Strider told reporters,
"I hope the Chicago niggers
and the N.A.A.C.P.
are satisfied."
People are used to doing things
normal around here.
(laughs)
And they just tried
to run the thing.
They thought they could run over
the judge and the sheriff
and everybody over there.
They thought that they,
you know, could just take over,
but they didn't.
REPORTER:
How do you folks feel
now that it's all over?
Roy, how about you?
I'm just glad it's over with.
REPORTER:
J.W.?
I am, too.
And Mrs. Bryant?
I feel fine.
And how about you,
Mrs. Milam?
Fine.
NARRATOR:
Reports of the acquittal
made front-page headlines
across the United States
and set off
an international firestorm.
"The life of a Negro
in Mississippi,"
one European paper observed,
"is not worth a whistle."
From Boston to Los Angeles,
Black people
packed meeting halls
and spilled into the streets
to hear Mamie Till
tell her story.
TILL:
And what I saw
was a shame before God and man.
And the way the jury chose to
believe the ridiculous stories
of the defense attorneys.
I I just can't go into detail
to tell you
the silly things,
the stupid things
that were brought up
as probabilities,
and they swallowed it
like a fish swallows a hook.
Just anything, just any excuse
to acquit these two men.
NARRATOR:
Protected from
further prosecution,
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam
sold their story
to a reporter from
"Look" magazine for $4,000.
Their account appeared just
four months after the acquittal.
READER:
"We took him and we was
just going to whip him,
scare some sense into him."
"Back of the house
is a tool shed,
"two rooms about 12 feet square.
"We walked him in there
"and took turns smashing him
across the head with a .45
first my brother, and then me."
"We put him back in the truck.
We knew what we was
going to do."
"There's a spot about a mile
and a half from the bridge
"where the banks are steep.
"It was just the spot.
"I held up the gun.
"I fired, and the Chicago boy
twisted around
and caught it right in the ear."
"We tied the gin fan to his neck
with barbed wire
"and rolled his body
into 20 feet of muddy water.
"For three hours that morning,
"we had a big old fire
in the yard.
"Damn if that nigger
didn't have crepe-soled shoes.
You know how hard
they are to burn?"
NARRATOR:
If there were others involved,
as Willie Reed and Mose Wright
had testified under oath,
Milam and Bryant
did not name them.
Mamie Till went to Washington
to press the federal government
to reopen the case.
Despite thousands of letters
protesting Mississippi's
handling of the murder,
President Dwight Eisenhower
and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
ruled out
a federal investigation.
Eisenhower didn't even answer
Mamie Till's telegram.
♪
NARRATOR:
No one ever did time
for the killing
of the 14 year-old Black boy
from Chicago.
♪
But his murder, and the trial
and acquittal of his killers,
sent a powerful message:
If change was going to come,
people would have to put
themselves on the line.
Contributions to civil rights
groups soared.
And 100 days after the death
of Emmett Till,
Rosa Parks refused to give up
her seat to a white person,
and the Montgomery bus boycott
began.
When people saw what
had happened to my son,
men stood up who had
never stood up before.
People became vocal
who had never vocalized before.
Emmett's death was the opening
of the Civil Rights Movement.
He was the sacrificial lamb
of the movement.
♪
PEARSON:
I do believe that nationally,
or at least across the South,
the Emmett Till trial and the
and the result of that trial
somehow spurred
the Civil Rights Movement,
as if this was either the last
straw or maybe it was the spark.
♪
People were thoroughly disgusted
at what happened
in that situation.
And it made an awful lot
of people realize
that they themselves had to get
involved and do something.
♪
It was just a magnificent
reaction to a very ugly thing
that had taken place
in this country.
♪
♪
♪
♪