Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren vogebam here. Today's episode gives brief but graphic
Speaker 1: details about the murder of Emmett Till. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: Emmett Till was just fourteen years old in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen when he traveled to visit family in the
Speaker 1: small community of Money in the Mississippi Delta. Untill was
Speaker 1: born and raised in a suburb of Chicago. He had
Speaker 1: never been to the Deep South. The tragic story of
Speaker 1: young Till's murder at the hands of white men because
Speaker 1: he was black became too many a catalyst for the
Speaker 1: American civil rights movement. But his story did not end
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. It never really ended. We spoke with Florida
Speaker 1: State University professor Davis Howe, who helped create the Emmett
Speaker 1: Till Memory Project, and it's been instrumental in building f
Speaker 1: s U S Emmett Till Archive. He said, I'd like
Speaker 1: to think that if we had the trial again, that
Speaker 1: number one, we'd have some black jurors and some women,
Speaker 1: that in fact, justice would be done. That's the optimist
Speaker 1: in me, But I don't want to be too optimistic,
Speaker 1: because we're at a time in our country right now
Speaker 1: where anything goes in terms of violence visited upon young
Speaker 1: black boys for whistling at a white woman. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we're pretty far down the road from that, But
Speaker 1: I don't want to say we've arrived at some ideal place.
Speaker 1: We haven't. The murder of Emmett Till could have been
Speaker 1: lost to time, just another of the thousands of lynchings
Speaker 1: that were perpetuated all over the United States after the
Speaker 1: Civil War. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than
Speaker 1: four thousand, four hundred lynchings in twenty states between eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven and nineteen fifty. Until's murder stands out separately
Speaker 1: from those, though not because of its sheer violence. Lynchings were,
Speaker 1: by definition brutal, but because the particular in humanity brought
Speaker 1: upon him was not automatically relegated to the inside pages
Speaker 1: of newspapers as many others have been. Even in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: shortly after his death, news accounts almost immediately condemned the
Speaker 1: teen's murder. The for her at the state at the time,
Speaker 1: Governor Hugh White even spoke out against it. Still, it
Speaker 1: was not until Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley then Mamie
Speaker 1: Till Bradley, demanded that her son be returned to Chicago
Speaker 1: for burial. That the entire world took notice because she
Speaker 1: held an open casket funeral to show what had happened
Speaker 1: to him. He was beaten, shot, had a seventy five
Speaker 1: pound fan tied to his neck with barbed wire, and
Speaker 1: was then tossed into the Tallahatchee River, where he was
Speaker 1: found several days later. Bradley told documentary in Keith Bucamp
Speaker 1: years later, in retelling the story of the day she
Speaker 1: saw her son's body returned from Mississippi. Oh, yes, we're
Speaker 1: going to open the casket. Let the people see what
Speaker 1: I see. I want the world to see this. More
Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand people attended Till's funeral. Jet magazine
Speaker 1: published graphic photos, including one depicting Bradley standing above the
Speaker 1: coffin containing her battered son's body, and the outrage grew
Speaker 1: louder when the two men accused of the murder, Roy
Speaker 1: Bryant and J. W. Millham, work fitted by an all
Speaker 1: white jury weeks later. Anyone looking for further reason to
Speaker 1: put an end to lynching and demand racial justice had
Speaker 1: a rallying point. What prompted tills kidnapping and murder is
Speaker 1: still debated, and in reality, is beside the point. The
Speaker 1: jurors were told by Bryant's wife, Caroline, the Till had
Speaker 1: whistled at her, come into the Bryant family store, grabbed
Speaker 1: her by the wrist, put his hands on her waist,
Speaker 1: and bragged about being with white women. But it wasn't true.
Speaker 1: She recanted that story years later. What she told author
Speaker 1: Timothy Tyson for his seen book The Blood of Emmett
Speaker 1: Till strikes at the very truth of that night. She said,
Speaker 1: nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him. Still,
Speaker 1: the original retelling of the encounter between fourteen year old
Speaker 1: Till and twenty one year old Caroline Bryant has had
Speaker 1: remarkable staying power, despite the fact that it's been disavowed
Speaker 1: by its creator. Nineteen fifty six Look magazine article by
Speaker 1: William Bradford Huey, containing a confession from the murderers that
Speaker 1: Look paid them to give, was purported to tell the
Speaker 1: true account of the murder. Halke said that so called
Speaker 1: confession continues in some to function as a history of
Speaker 1: what happened to Emmett Till that night. What the article
Speaker 1: has done. What I see is it divides Mississippi along
Speaker 1: black and white lines. Oh, Emmett Till was kind of
Speaker 1: this borderline rapist man child who had a coming to him.
Speaker 1: You will hear that in Polite Company in Mississippi to
Speaker 1: the present day. Till's story had an immediate and profound
Speaker 1: effect on Americans at the time, both black and white,
Speaker 1: largely because of his mother's bold decision to display his
Speaker 1: body and Jet's decision among others, including the Chicago Defender,
Speaker 1: to publish the pictures. A former politician and activist, Julian Bond,
Speaker 1: who died, wrote a forward to Devere S Anderson's indispensable
Speaker 1: look at the events Emmitt Till, the murder that shocked
Speaker 1: the world and propelled at the civil rights movement. In it,
Speaker 1: he wrote, the Till story was a touchstone narrative of
Speaker 1: my generation. Among many Southern hor stories, this was among
Speaker 1: the most morbid. The Till death picture was proof of
Speaker 1: white Southerners malevolence. Their refusal to acknowledge the killer's guilt
Speaker 1: was proof of their acceptance of evil. Until's story was
Speaker 1: recounted through the nineteen sixties as a Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: became law. It's still widely cited by activists from Bond
Speaker 1: to Rosa Parks and beyond, and the story of what
Speaker 1: happened in Mississippi in August of nineteen may not be
Speaker 1: finished either. Till's body was exhumed and positively identified as
Speaker 1: part of a two thousand four Department of Justice reopening
Speaker 1: of the case, which resulted in no new charges. A
Speaker 1: Mississippi grand jury in two thousand seven found no evidence,
Speaker 1: suggested by documentary and Beaucamp that as many as fourteen
Speaker 1: people may have taken part in his kidnapping and murder.
Speaker 1: In eighteen, the Department of Justice again opened up an investigation.
Speaker 1: It's evidently still pending. Many articles, books, and documentaries have
Speaker 1: been produced on the story. There's now an Emmett Till
Speaker 1: Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi. A few other museums are
Speaker 1: in the works. The state of Mississippi has several road
Speaker 1: signs that detail places in the Emmett Till story, though
Speaker 1: many of the signs continue to be shot and otherwise vandalized.
Speaker 1: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, dedicated to Black
Speaker 1: people Terrorized by Lynching opened in twenty eighteen, not far
Speaker 1: from the Legacy Museum From in Slaveland to mass Incarceration.
Speaker 1: Both are projects of the Equal Justice Initiative, and finally,
Speaker 1: on February twenty six, twenty the United States House of
Speaker 1: Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Act four
Speaker 1: hundred and ten to four to make lynching a federal
Speaker 1: hate crime. This comes after lawmakers have tried and failed
Speaker 1: more than two hundred times. The bill still needs to
Speaker 1: be passed in the U s. Senate and signed by
Speaker 1: the President to become law. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on
Speaker 1: this and lots of other topics, visit housetoffworks dot com.
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