Several nights after the incident in the store, Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam were armed when they went to Till’s great-uncle’s house and abducted the boy. They took him away and beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River.

By 1955, African Americans across the country, including in the segregated South, had begun the struggle for justice. Emmett Till’s murder was a spark in the upsurge of activism and resistance that became known as the Civil Rights movement.

Moses returned in November to testify at the grand jury hearing for Milam and Bryant’s kidnapping case. When the grand jury refused to return an indictment, Moses Wright left for Chicago. He never again returned to Mississippi.

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, on Chicago’s South Side and was nicknamed Bobo because of his fun-loving, cheerful disposition while growing up in the segregated middle-class neighborhood.

Deceased (1931–1994)

But what happened four days later is. Bryant’s husband Roy and his half brother, J.W. Milam, seized the 14-year-old from his great-uncle’s house. The pair then beat Till, shot him, and strung barbed wire and a 75-pound metal fan around his neck and dumped the lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River.

Strider was the first official to learn that a body had been discovered by a young man fishing in the Tallahatchie River. He hoped to bury the body right away, and even ordered Emmett Till’s Mississippi relatives to get his body in the ground by nightfall.

When his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in the summer of 1955, the report said, “the crown of his head was just crushed out and a piece of his skull just fell out.”

Burr Oak Cemetery, Alsip, Illinois, United States

Bobo

The Murder of Emmett Till is a 2003 documentary film produced by Firelight Media that aired on the PBS program American Experience. The film chronicles the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955.

2006

1934 (age 87 years)

14 years (1941–1955)

Woodlawn

St. Lawrence Avenue

Mamie Till

Chicago

Septe

Au

Mccosh Elementary School

Mamie hoped that by coaxing Emmett with an opportunity to learn to drive on the open road, he would opt to go with her instead. But for Emmett, news that his cousins would be spending the summer together in Mississippi was an opportunity he didn’t want to pass up.

Emmett Till, a 14-year old African American boy, was murdered in August 1955 in a racist attack that shocked the nation and provided a catalyst for the emerging civil rights movement. A Chicago native, Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, when he was accused of harassing a local white woman.

Louis Till

Chicago, Illinois, United States

For her son’s funeral in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the casket containing his body be left open, because, in her words, “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.” Born in Mississippi, Till-Mobley moved with her parents to the Chicago area during the Great Migration.