The Tallahatchie River: A Brief Story Of Emmett Till

- “In an act of extraordinary bravery, Moses Wright took the stand and identified Bryant and Milam as Till's kidnappers and killers. At the time, it was almost unheard of for blacks to openly accuse whites in court, and by doing so Wright put his own life in grave danger.”

Friends or parents vouched for the boy in Bryant's store, and Carolyn's companion denied that the boy Bryant and Washington seized was the one who had accosted her. Somehow, Bryant learned that the boy in the incident was from Chicago and was staying with Mose Wright.Several witnesses overheard Bryant and his 36-year-old half-brother, John William "J. W." Milam, discussing taking Till from his house.In the early morning hours—between 2:00 am and 3:30 am—on August 28, 1955, Bryant, Milam, and Bryant's wife drove to Mose Wright's house. Milam was armed with a pistol and a flashlight. He asked Wright if he had three boys in the house from Chicago. Till was sharing a bed with another cousin; there were eight people in the small two-bedroom cabin. Milam asked Wright to take them to "the nigger who did the talking." Till's great-aunt offered the men money, but Milam refused as he rushed Emmett to put on his clothes. Moses Wright informed the men that Till was from up north and

Several days after Till flirted with the young store owner, the youth was abruptly awakened by Roy Bryant and his half-brother JW Milam. Much to the protests of Moses Wright, Till’s uncle, the two men kidnapped Emmett Till and threw him in the back of their pick-up truck. Although their first intentions were to merely scare the youth, the night took a turn for the worst once Emmett began to resist the men and their attempts to subdue the boy. They brutally beat the boy and hit him several times with their guns. Bryant and Milam dragged the boy near the Tallahatchie River while making Emmett carry a cotton gin fan. Stripping Till of all his clothes, the men shot him in the head and sank the corpse in the river with the gin fan around his neck. Then the two men quickly escaped the crime scene. (World Criminal of Justice)

A theme for the Mississippi Trial 1955 is justice. African Americans wanted justice and equality throughout the book. The trial of Emmett Till represented justice even though Roy and J.W were convicted not guilty because the African American witnesses were able to participate in the trial. This unfair trial will be told throughout history, which will prove the racist acts that were convicted on African Americans. Emmett Till’s mother had an open casket for her son, because she wanted

A African American boy named Emmett Till discovered dead by the Tallahatchie river, on October 28th. Till was found with a hole right through his head, and tied up with barbed wire.

Emmett Till was born and raised in Chicago, IL by his mother, Mamie. Emmett travelled by train to Money, Mississippi where he visited with relatives and worked on a cotton farm. Emmett and his cousin went into town one afternoon to take a break from the hot sun on the farm. Emmett entered the grocery store to buy candy where a Caucasian female was working behind the counter. The female was Carolyn Bryant, and her husband Roy owned the store. Carolyn told her husband that the day Emmett was in the store, he whistled at her which was inappropriate during this time. Once Roy was aware of what happened, he and another White man went to where Emmett was living and took him in the early morning. Emmett was then beaten and kept in a barn near Bryant’s

“They then beat the teenager brutally, dragged him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and shoved his mutilated body into the water...and three days later his corpse was pulled out of the river” (“Emmett Till”).

After the emergence of this “new racism”, the lack of comfortability and control is displaying itself today in examples of racially motivated violence that mirror several racist events in pre-Civil Rights history. In August of 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who arrived in rural Mississippi to unknowingly change the dynamic of racism in America, at least he did then. The story goes that while he was in a store, he whistled at a white woman, the wife of storeowner Roy Bryant, who was not present. The woman, Carolyn Bryant, testified later under oath that Emmett asked her for a date, made crude gestures, and then some resulting in Emmett being chased out of the store. A few days later, Emmett was tracked down by Roy Bryant, was

After reading the intense story of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Trial, the romantic, yet engaging Pride & Prejudice, and depressing, yet confusing story of Hamlet, have taught me that you really need to look twice before you completely understand what’s happening in the novels. Thought my essay you are going to see reasons why I’m choosing to write about the three stories I listed above and how they have influenced my life and how I gained more of a perspective on the different times throughout the centuries and how they have evolved going from Emmett Till’s segregation age to Pride and Prejudice’s romance during the renaissance age to Hamlet’s Medieval Times.

There are several views of the murder of Emmett Till regarding the topic of whether or not he received justice. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy, was murdered purely based on racism, because he was killed for “wolf-whistling” at a white woman in August 1955. He was brutally murdered after being nearly beaten to death and having his eyes gouged out. When Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, two people involved in Till’s manslaughter, were placed on trial for his murder, they were pronounced innocent and did not receive any punishment. After being tortured and savagely killed, no one was held responsible for Emmett Till’s death. Emmett Till did not receive justice after his death.

The documentary, narrative "The Lynching of Emmett Till" by Christopher Metress, tells Emmett's story of death through various points of view. On August 24, 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago, entered a rural grocery store of Money, Mississippi. Because the young child had been gloating about his bond with white people up north, his southern cousins had dared him to go into the store and say something to the women working the register. Emmett accepted their challenge; seconds later he was at the counter, set on purchasing two items. What he did or said next will never be known for sure, but whatever passed between these two strangers from two different worlds set off a chain reaction that would forever

     Soon after Moody entered high school, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago, was killed for whistling at a white woman. After hearing about the murder, Moody realized she really did not know much about what was going on around her. ?Before Emmett Till?s murder, I had known the fear of hunger hell and the Devil but now there was a new fear known to me ? the fear of being killed just because I was black.? Moody?s response to this was asking her high school teacher, Mrs. Rice, about Emmett?s murder and the NAACP.

In 1955 Emmett planned to visit family in Money, Mississippi (“The death of”, n.d.). The trip was scheduled for August 20th and Emmett was going to stay with his great uncle Moses Wright (“The death of”, n.d.). As J. Williams writes in a book about Emmett’s life, the day before Emmett left for his trip Mamie Till, Emmett’s mother, gave him the ring from his father, inscribed with his father’s initials, L.T. (1987). After a day long train ride Emmett arrived in Mississippi and joined his great uncle and friends to begin his visit to the south. A few days after his arrival, Emmett went with friends to a local grocery store where they spent time relaxing after picking cotton during the day. To the disbelief of his friends, Emmett bragged that his girlfriend at home was a white girl. Emmett was a comical young man and a rambunctious teenager, who when dared

Milam, kidnapped Emmett. The men then abused and tortured Emmett in a barn and after, they took him to the Tallahatchie River where they shot and killed him. Then they tied Emmett to a cotton gin fan, weighing about seventy pounds, with barbed wire around his neck and threw his body into the river. Three days following, Emmett Till’s destroyed body was found by someone fishing in the river.

The South had many brutal beating and lynchings of African-Americans. One horrific event was Emmett Till. Emmett was a 14 year old African-American boy that was originally from Chicago, Illinois, but he was visiting family in Mississippi. He was in town with his cousins and they went into a drug store to get bubble gum. On their way out, Emmit “flirted” with the woman at the cash register by saying “Bye, baby.” The woman was extremely offended. Her husband was the owner of the store and he was on a business trip, when he returned home the woman told him about what had happened and he was furious. On the night of August 28, 1955, in the middle of the night, the man got the woman’s brother and they went to Emmett’s Great Uncle Mose Wright’s house where Emmett was staying. They forced Emmett into the car and drove him to the Tallahatchie River. The men forced him to carry a 75 pound cotton-gin fan to the river bank. Emmett was forced to remove his clothes and the men beat him nearly to death. They brutally gouged out Emmett’s eye and shot him in the head. The cotton-gin fan was tied to the body and then thrown into the river. The body was found and recovered three days later on August 31, the body looked almost inhuman. The only way the body was identified as Emmett Till, was a ring that had been pasted down through the family that Emmett always worn. Till’s mother Mamie Bradley