Emmett Till Research Paper

When Roy Bryant was informed of what had happened, he aggressively questioned several young black men who entered the store. That evening, Bryant, with a black man named J. W. Washington, approached a black teenager walking along a road. Bryant ordered Washington to seize the boy, put him in

In the real life example of Emmett Till as well as the fiction of Tom Robinson, the defendant had been killed. Both deaths were preventable, and both men innocent. The tragedy of racism still invades our courtrooms to this day, and justice is still not truly

Emmett Till was an 14 year old African- American boy who was brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white women. Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, and went into a small store, but no really knows what happened. His friends may have dared him to ask her out. Carolyn said he wolf -whistled , but he had polio as a young child ,so he was taught to whistle before he’d say a hard word.His friends did hear him say ‘bye baby’ , Carolyn was insulted and told her husband. He was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by J.W. Miliam and Roy Bryant. They gouged out his eye ,threw him in the river, and they were not guilty of this crime. His body couldn’t be identified , tied his body to a cotton gin, and they kidnapped him. Emmett

Emmett till was born July 25,1941 he was 14 year old boy.His mother sent him to Mississippi to see his family.While there he saw a white women go bye while he was with his friend’s he called the white women out of name.He said”hey baby” to the white women she told her half brother, husband and two of their friends.Outside the house of his uncle the four men kidnapped beat and killed Emmett Till.One month later on September 23, 1955 the body was found and the four men was put on trial for murder of Emmett Till and a all whit jury found them guilty of murder.

Till had a couple of relatives in Money, Mississippi that he would go visit on occasions, usually his great uncle. Every holiday and summer that they spent together was always adequate, until one terrible August day in 1955 Emmett supposedly made the mistake of flirting with a white woman named Carolyn Bryant, a cashier in a grocery store. Of course a fourteen year old boy didn’t think anything

Milam drove over to Mose Wright’s home, where Emmett was staying. It was about 2:30 am when they had gone up to the house and demanded to see Emmett. Although Emmett was unsure of the violence that went on between races in Mississippi, his uncle knew. He allowed the two men without a fight, to see Emmett. He thought that they would just beat him and return him home. The men took Emmett to a place nearby, and into a shed. Nobody is positive of what the two men did to him that night, but there was a teen nearby, who did hear sounds coming from the shed. The witness, “Mr. Reed, an African American sharecropper, risked his life at 18 to appear as a surprise witness in the prosecution of the white men accused of the crime.”

Emmett Till was a 14 year old African American boy who was brutally beaten and murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Emmett Till lived in Chicago,but was visiting family in Money, Mississippi(source 2). Carolyn Bryant, the “victim”, might have thought he had whistled at her. Emmett had a small speech impediment because he had polio when he was young, and he sometimes whistled to help him. The only witness to this act was Carolyn Bryant. Emmett was beaten and murdered for whistling in a white woman’s presence in a small grocery store(source 1). Roy Bryant(Carolyn’s husband) was outraged and took J.W. Milam to kill Emmett. They shot him in the head and beat him up. Then they tied a heavy fan around Emmett’s neck

Emmett’s mother was also called to the witness stand. She was asked if the photo of the brutally beaten and tortured boy that was pulled out of the river was her son, and she confirms with, “ A mother knows her child, has known him since he was born. I looked at the face very carefully...I just looked at it very carefully, and I was able to find out that it was my son, Emmett Louis Till.” Even with all the evidence that Bryant and Milam had done this awful murder of this young boy, at the end of the trial the jury and judge had acquitted both men. These two men had committed such a sick and disturbing crime, feel no remorse, and get away with it. This also shows racism, and the effects it had, If the trial had not took place in the south, with

Till was never exposed to the racial inequality he would face in Mississippi, so he was oblivious of how he was expected to act. Till, unaware of the extreme

Emmett Till was raised in Chicago and blacks were treated differently in the South, than in the North, where Emmett was raised. This passage, stated by Emmett’s friend, made me realize that life for different races was very difficult back then. A society with racial boundaries is almost impossible to comprehend to me, but this was very common to everywhere back then.

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she said. Carolyn Bryant admitting the wrongfulness in this situation leaves a lot to question. Why would a married white woman want to purposely set a black teenage boy up for something no good could possibly come out of? She knew that if she told her family about Emmett whistling and making advances towards her (not true), that they would retaliate in an angry manner. If she was married to this man she would obviously know if he disliked African Americans or not, and if she didn’t know, their relationship was not that

Infuriated, Rob went to the home of Emmett’s great uncle, Mose Wright, with his brother in law J.W. Milan, in the early hours of August 28. Rob and J.W. demanded to see Emmett and Despite his uncle’s pleas, they forced Emmett into their car and kiddnapped him. They took Emmett to a toolhouse behind Milam’s residence, where they brutally beat and tortured Emmett for hours on end. Barely alive, they took Emmett to Tallahatchie River where they shot and disposed of his body. Emmett’s corpse was found three days later but was so disfigured that Mose Wright could only identify him by his initialed ring. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Emmett’s mother requested it to be sent back to Chicago. After seeing Emmett’s disfigured remains, Emmett’s mother, Mamie, decided to have an open casket funeral so all the world could see what the horrible, racist, murderers have done to her only child. Two weeks after Emmett’s body was buried, Milam and Bryant went on trial in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. The few witnesses they had identified the defendants as Emmett’s murderers, but on September 23, the all white jury ruled the verdict as “not guilty”. The jury’s reasoning was that the state has failed to prove the identity of the corpse. This outraged citizens nationwide, Emmett’s trial brought light to the brutality of the Jim Crow laws and ultimately sparked the civil rights movement.

On the 28 of August, 2 white men came to visit my house at around 2:30 am. They pounded on the door and asked to talk to the boy, Emmett Till. Emmett admitted days before that he was scared that they would visit the house because he talkd to a white shop owner and had asked to leave, however, my wife Elizabeth Wright decided there was nothin’ to worry about and the situation had just been blown out of proportion. It is now the 29th of August at 7:30am and I haven’t heard nothin’ about my nephew, Emmett.

The case of Emmett Till has many different interpretations, but there is one in particular, that is quite similar to the actual story. The fictional book, Wolf Whistle, was set in the 1950’s and written by Lewis Nordan. Nordan uses many literary devices such as: marginalized voice, magical realism, and symbolism to compare Bobo to Emmett Till. The story is centered around Bobo’s visit to Mississippi to see his family. When Bobo goes to the local grocery store with his friends, they dare him to “wolf whistle” at a white woman, Sally Anne Montberclaire.

After reading the Houck essay and watching the Emmett Till documentary I was heart broken to hear all about how the press in Mississippi played a huge roll in the way the community perceived the story. For example when talking about the trial in local newspapers they would always refer to Carolyn Bryant as “pretty Mrs. Bryant” or “Bryant’s attractive wife” who has been the victim of “wolf-whistling Chicago Negro” (Houck, pg.243) By referring to this women in this context it makes it seem like what Bryant did wasn’t as bad as it really was even though thats not what was said it puts out that type of feeling. The media also made it seem like Carolyn Bryant was the victim and not Emmett Till and what happened to him is what he deserved. This ties with Bosmajians article on language and dehumanization because how they talked about Emmett Till in the local news that he was a “wolf-whistling Chicago Negro” makes him seem like an animal not a human.