Shades of Truth Theater Company Presents: "A Whistle in Mississippi: The LYNCHING of Emmett Till"

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941. In 1955, Emmett and his cousin Curtis Jones were sent to visit their great-uncle Mose Wright, who lived in Money, Mississippi. His mother, Mamie, made sure to instruct Emmett to “mind his manners” when around white people. She knew that race relations in Mississippi were significantly different than those in Chicago.

As a child, Emmett suffered from polio, a viral disease that affects the nerve cells of the brain stem and spinal cord. This disease left him with a hindering stutter.

The South in 1955: Mississippi endured a lynching period from 1876 to 1930, where over 500 African-Americans were murdered because of racial tensions of the community. Lynching is defined as “Any act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person which results in the death of the person.” The act is commonly associated with the strangulation of a person from being suspended, or hung, in the air with a noose around their neck. Southern whites used lynching practices to terrorize freed blacks after the Civil War. The racially motivated murders (by lynching) of African-Americans have spanned from the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacy organization, lynchings of the 1860s to the violence of those who opposed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Mark in History: On August 24, 1955, Emmett joined other teenagers, all under sixteen years old, to go to Bryant’s Grocery Store in Money, Mississippi to buy candy. Roy and Carolyn Bryant owned the grocery store. One of the boys dared Emmett to flirt with 21-year old Carolyn. The actual accounts that occurred in the store are still disputed. According to several versions, Emmett whistled at Carolyn; others say he grabbed her hand and asked for a date; others say all he did was say “Bye, baby” as he left the store. Carolyn told her husband, Roy, about the incident. She claimed that Emmett spoke to her inappropriately and used “unprintable” words. Carolyn may have misunderstood Emmett’s words because of his persistent stutter. Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam decided they would take it upon themselves to punish Emmett for his actions in the store.

Emmett’s Death: Four days after the incident, on August 28, 1955, Roy and J.W. drove to Mose Wright’s house around 12:30 in the morning. They pounded on the door until Mose opened it and they demanded to see Emmett. They dragged Emmett from his room, put him in the back of their pickup truck, and drove to a shed on a nearby plantation in Sunflower County, where they beat and shot him. They tied a 75-pound cotton gin fan to his neck with barbed wire and threw him into the Tallahatchie River. Two fishermen found Emmett’s body three days later. The body was swollen and disfigured; his face was too mutilated to identify him, but the ring he was wearing was enough evidence to confirm Emmett’s identity. His mother had given Emmett his father’s ring the day before he left for Mississippi.

The Trial: Mamie Till brought Emmett’s recovered body back to Chicago to be buried. She insisted on an open casket funeral so everyone could witness the racially motivated brutality her only son endured. 50,000 people came to see Emmett’s body, and photos of the body printed in magazines stirred the nation. At the trial following the funeral, Mose Wright was a main witness used to testify against Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam. It was difficult to find witnesses for the case, because it was dangerous for blacks to testify against a white person, but Mose was one of a few blacks to step up and testify against them. When asked to identify Emmett’s killer, Mose pointed at one of the defendants saying, “there he is” (the phrase “Dar he!” was a caption conceived by a white journalist for the case on the assumption that Wright was ignorant or crazy to be the first black man to accuse a white man in a Mississippi Court). At the conclusion of the trial, an all-white male jury acquitted both Roy and J.W. The deliberation took 67 minutes, and one juror is quoted saying “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.” The rash acquittal outraged people in the U.S. and sparked the fire that initiated the Civil Rights Movement. After the trial, Roy and J.W. eventually admitted to Emmett’s murder.