Unsurprisingly, the all-white, all-male jury took only an hour of deliberation to acquit Bryant and Milam of murder. Carolyn testified under oath without the jury present that Till said “ugly remarks” to her before whistling, which was deemed inadmissible since it didn’t have anything to do with the act of the murder itself. When he was pulled from the water three days later, his body was only identifiable by the signet ring on his finger. They brutally beat him, dragged him to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him to a large metal fan with barbed wire and threw his body into the river. on August 28th, Bryant and Milam kidnapped Till. Milam what happened.Īt approximately 2:30 a.m. Aghast and appalled, she told her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. He encountered Carolyn Bryant, the owner’s 21-year-old wife, allegedly whistled at her (although it has been said that Emmett had a lisp, and it was unlikely that he could whistle) and flirted with young, beautiful Carolyn. As a resident of Chicago’s South Side, Till was accustomed to black-owned businesses and the thick, heavy air of racial tension in the Mississippi Delta was new to him. Three days after his arrival, Emmett Till visited Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, a white-owned store in Money, Mississippi - two hours north of Jackson - for two cents worth of bubble gum. Emmett wanted to visit his family in Mississippi and Mamie agreed to let him go.

She hugged him goodbye and gave him a signet ring that belonged to his late father. On August 20, 1955, Mamie Till put her 14-year-old son Emmett on a bus at the 63rd Street station in Chicago. This is part of our series of places where Black History happened

What happened to emmett till