The murder of Emmett Till

Emmett Till was fourteen, visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta from Chicago, when he was accused of offending Carolyn Bryant in a grocery store in Money on 24 August 1955. Four nights later Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam took him at gunpoint from the home of his great-uncle, Mose Wright. They beat him, shot him, weighted his body with a cotton gin fan and put it in the Tallahatchie River. It was found on 31 August.

His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, had his body brought back to Chicago and insisted the casket be left open, so that the country would have to look at what had been done to her son. Tens of thousands did, and the photographs published in Jet turned a Delta killing into a national reckoning. Mose Wright testified against both men in open court, at enormous personal risk, and then left Mississippi for good.

An all-white, all-male jury acquitted Bryant and Milam in about an hour. Months later, protected by double jeopardy, the two men described the killing for a paid magazine article. No one was ever convicted. In 2023 the sites connected to the murder and to Mamie Till-Mobley's decision - in Mississippi and in Chicago - were designated a national monument.