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Nov. 13, 2006 WARNING: The end of this article contains a link to a graphic photo of the disfigured face of Emmett Till. Emmett Louis Till was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 25, 1941. He died within five weeks of his fourteenth birthday, beaten to death and beyond recognition after allegedly whistling at a white woman. The event took place in Mississippi’s Leflore county, in the small town of Money. This event is what many consider to be the “trigger” that began the Civil Right’s Era. Shortly before her death in 2003, Miss Till would describe her son’s remains for documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp: "I looked at the bridge of his nose and it looked like someone had taken a meat chopper and chopped it. And I looked at his teeth because I took so much pride in his teeth. His teeth were the prettiest things I'd ever seen in my life, I thought. And I only saw two. Well, where are the rest of them? They had just been knocked out. And I was looking at his ears, and that's when I discovered a hole about here and I could see daylight on the other side. I said, 'Now, was it necessary to shoot him?'” Till was raised by a single mother, as his father, Louis Till, was killed by U.S. Armed forces when Emmett was but 2. While a member of the Army, Louis Till was alleged to have raped two Italian women and killed a third. In the summer of 1955, Emmett was sent from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi. He had been warned by relatives to acquiesce to whites, and that not doing so could be dangerous. Till’s uncle confirms as much, telling CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2004, “You're always prepared to go to Mississippi to stay alive. Because once you got to Mississippi, you had no protection under the law.” Till was in town but two days, when the following incidents occurred. He and several cousins were going to the store for candy. The store was owned by 24-year old Roy Bryant and his wife, Carolyn. Emmett was alleged to have “flirted” with Mrs. Bryant. One of Till’s cousins, however, claims that Till was attempting to be funny and whistled at Mrs. Bryant. Later, during trial testimony, Carolyn Bryant said that Till grabbed her by the waist and asked for a date. She also accused him of using profane language, despite the fact Till spoke with a stutter. She ordered the boys from the store, for being rowdy. When her husband returned several days later, he heard of the incident and on August 28th, he and his 36-year old half-brother V.W. Milam, kidnapped Till from the home of an Uncle. According to Wikipedia, Till was taken “…to a weathered plantation shed in neighboring Sunflower County, where they brutally beat him until he was unrecognizable, cut off an ear, gouged out an eye, then shot him with a .45 caliber pistol before tying a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan around Till's neck with barbed wire. This was to weigh down his body, which was dropped into the Tallahatchie River near Glendora, another small cotton town.” The following day it was learned that Emmett was missing. Immediately, Bryant and Milam were suspected and arrested. The two men claimed that they released Till after realizing that he was not the person who offended Carolyn Bryant. On August 31, Till’s mutilated corpse was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. The NAACP, led by Medgar Evers, began their own investigation. Witnesses who saw Bryant and Milam with Till, said that the fourteen-year old was identified by someone who sounded like a woman. Mamie Carthan Till, Emmett’s mother, made her son’s funeral an open-casket affair, to show the brutality. The photos were shown around the world and published in Jetmagazine. On the day Till was buried (September 6, 1955), Bryant and Milam were indicted by a grand jury. However, despite eyewitness testimony that Bryant and Milam had Till and several other black boys in the back of their pickup, the men were acquitted of the murder. The jury returned the verdict in just over an hour. Two of the witnesses--Henry Lee Loggins and Levi Collins--were allegedly jailed by Sheriff H.C. Strider, to keep them from testifying. A year later, in an article that appeared in Life magazine, the two confessed to killing the boy. They knew that under the double-jeopardy laws, they could not be retried. Moreover, research by filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, indicates that Loggins himself, may have taken part in Till’s abduction. Loggins vehemently denies the accusation. Years later, during the 60 Minutes interview, Till’s cousin, Simeon Wright stated that he saw “…two men standing over the bed. One had a gun, which was J.W. Milam. I saw Roy Bryant…my mother was pleading and begging with him not to take him…My dad was pleading with him. And my mother then at that time offered to give them money to leave Emmett alone. And Roy Bryant kind of hesitated. But J.W. Milam, he didn't hesitate at all. He didn't even think about taking money. He came there to take Emmett, and that's what he proceeded to do." In their confession, Milam said Till was defiant and unrepentant for what he had done. Both men later died of cancer, Bryant after losing his business. According to Wikipedia, “Bryant complained bitterly in an interview that he had never made as much money off Till's death as he deserved and that it had ruined his life.” In 2004, Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer, of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spearheaded efforts to get the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen the investigation. This after an expose by CBS news reporter Ed Bradley and Keith Beauchamp’s documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. (which relied not only on interviews with surviving witnesses, but the use of old documents), that indicates as many as 14 people may have been involved in Till’s murder; moreover, five were still living. Schumer believes, “There ought to be a full trial, and if there are convictions, even though the people are old who did it, they ought to go to jail." The following year, part of U.S. Highway 49 was renamed for Till, as was the elementary school he attended. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Emmett%20Till&btnG=Google+Search&oe=ISO-8859-1&sa=N&tab=wi Sources: Emmett Till, biography, Wikipedia CBS Worldwide, October 21, 2004 National Public Radio Keith Beauchamp, ------------ About the author: Timothy N. Stelly, Sr. is a 46-year old poet, novelist and aspiring screenwriter who resides in northern California with his three youngest children--Lawrence, Kimberly and Dante. He is a member of various writer's groups and has three novels in print, his most recent, "Like A Straight-Up Sucka," is available at www.lulu.com. website: http://stellbreadO@tripod.com Email: stellbread@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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