The Lynching of Emmett Till

On August 20, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till leaves Chicago to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi. Eight days later, he's dead — lynched by white men enraged that he had flirted with one of their wives. (Some accounts have Till whistling at Carol Bryant; others say he called her "baby.") Roy Bryant and his half brother J. W. Milam take Till from his uncle's house, drive him to the banks of the Tallahatchie, beat him, and shoot him in the head. After tying a 75-pound cotton gin fan around his neck, they dump him into the river. When the body is found three days later, Till is barely recognizable. One police officer says it's the worst beating he's seen in eight years on the job, and the sheriff tries unsuccessfully to have Till buried immediately.

Till's murder horrifies the nation. Coming on the heels of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the year before, it seems like a bloody challenge to integration. The Chicago Defender castigates President Eisenhower for merely referring the case to the Justice Department. Why, the paper asks, has Congress never sponsored an investigation of lynching?

Bryant and Milam, charged with kidnapping and murder, are tried before an all-white jury that September. Till's uncle, Moses Wright, testifies against them, then flees the state, afraid for his life. The jury takes 67 minutes to reach a verdict of not guilty. Says one juror, "If we hadn't stopped to drink Coca-Cola, it wouldn't have taken that long."