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♪ I know the one thing that we did right 
was the day we started to fight ♪

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♪ Keep your eyes on the prize.
Hold on. Hold on ♪

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♪ Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on ♪

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♪ (country music) ♪

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- On August 21st, 1955 two teenagers from 
Chicago boarded a train and traveled south

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to visit family in Mississippi.

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- We was going down there
to pick some (inaudible).

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I'd never picked any (inaudible) before
and I was looking to do that

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because I told my mother
that I could pick 200 pounds

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and she told me I couldn't, you know.

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So you usually go down there 
looking for a good time, you know.

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- For more than a year, racial tensions 
in the South had been higher than usual.

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Since the Supreme Court ruled in
Brown v. Board of Education

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that segregated schools
were unconstitutional.

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The decision touched a raw nerve 
in the white South

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and many organized to preserve
white supremacy.

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(applause)

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For years groups like the Ku Klux Klan
practiced terrorism.

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Despite national Black protests, 
public murders of Blacks were common

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and the mobs who committed them
went unpunished.

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In the previous seventy years, there had 
been more than five hundred documented

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lynchings in Mississippi alone.

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Coming from Chicago, Curtis Jones 
and his cousin Emmett Till had little

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sense of the world they were entering 
when they arrived in Money, Mississippi.

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Emmett Till at the time, he was fourteen 
years old, had just graduated out of

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grammar school.

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He had some picture of white kids 
that he had graduate from.

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That was you know, female and male.

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So he told the boys down there, 
you know, that gather around the store

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so they must have been around about
maybe ten to twelve, you know

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youngsters around there. That the 
girls was his girlfriend, you know.

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So one of the local boys said
hey, there's a girl in that store there.

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He said "I bet you won't go in 
there and talk to her."

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So he went in there 
to get some candy.

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So when he was leaving out the store,
after buying the candy,

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he told her to say, "bye baby."

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And the next thing I know, one of the boys
came up to me and said, "Say man,

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"you got a crazy cousin. He just went in 
there and said bye to that white woman."

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And that's when this man I was 
playing checkers with this older man,

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I guess he must have been around
about sixty or seventy.

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He jumps straight up and say
"Boy, say y'all about to get out of here,

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"that lady will come out of that store
and blow your brains off."

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♪ (woman vocalizing)♪

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- This is Moses Wright. I am 
the uncle of Emmitt Lewis Till.

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Sunday morning, about two-thirty, 
someone called at the door,

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and I said, "Who is it?"

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And he said "This is Mr. Bryant.
I want to talk with you and the boy."

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And when I open this door,
that was a man standing with

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a pistol in one hand and a flashlight
in the other hand. And he asked me,

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"Did I have two boys, that 
are from Chicago?"

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I told him, I have.

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And he said "I want it, I want the 
boy that done all that talk".

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Then marched him to the car, 
and they asked someone there

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"Well this is the right boy?"
And the answer was, "Yeah."

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And they drove toward Money.

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- Four days later, Emmitt Till's body 
was found in the Tallahatchie River.

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- His body was so badly damaged that
we couldn't hardy just tell who he was,

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but he happened to have on
a ring with his initial.

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And that cleared it up.

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- The body was shipped home,
back north to Chicago,

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where Mamie Till Bradley insisted 
on an open casket funeral.

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"So all the world can see," she said,
"what they did to my boy."

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♪ (somber music) ♪

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Jet Magazine showed Till's corpse.

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Beaten, mutilated, shot through the head.

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An entire generation of young,
Black people would remember

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the horror of that photo.

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♪ (somber music) ♪

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Roy Bryant, husband of the woman
in the store and J.W, Milam,

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her brother in law, were arrested
for the murder of Emmitt Till.

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The trial was held in 
nearby Sumner, Mississippi.

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Black organizations like the NAACP and 
The Black Press worked especially hard

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to keep the case in the news, 
to make an example of

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southern racism for the world.

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- I cover the courts in many 
areas of this country, but

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the Till case was unbelievable.
I mean I just didn't get the sense

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of being a courtroom.

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It was, first place segregated.

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The Black Press sat at a bridge table
far off from the court and

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the boy's mother came down. 
They sat her there,

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at the bridge table with us.

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- What do you intend to do here today?

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- To answer any questions that the 
attorneys might ask me to answer.

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- How do you think it's possible 
to be of help to them?

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- I don't know. I mean just by answering 
any questions that they ask me.

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- Do you have any evidence 
bearing on this case.

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- I do know that this is my son.

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- The defense argued that the body found
tied to the cotton gin fan in the river

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was so disfigured that it could
not be identified as Emmett Till.

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The trial took five long, hot days.

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The prosecution star witness
was Till's uncle, Moses Wright,

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who testified despite 
threats to his life.

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- He was called up on too.

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Could he see anybody in the courtroom
identified anybody in that courtroom

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that come to his house that night
and got the Emmett Till out.

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He stood up and there was
a tension in the courtroom

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and he says in his broken language,
"Dar he."

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- Dar he. There he is.

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- I really didn't realize how brave
my grandfather Moss Wright was,

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but after I got older I realized
that he was a brave man.

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He was a mighty brave man to
travel back down there, you know,

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among all those hostile peoples
and testify, get up in court

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and point his finger at a white man 
and accuse him of murder.

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- As the trial ended, a defense lawyer
told the jury he was quote,

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"Sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you
has the courage to free these men."

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It took the jury an hour to 
find the men not guilty.

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(clapping and cheering)

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Months later, for a fee of $4,000,
Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam

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told their story to reporter 
William Bradford Huie.

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- Milam was startled at the belligerent 
attitude or the fact that young Till

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didn't appear to be afraid of him.

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He'd gone and gotten him out of bed
and had him in the back of the truck

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and young Till never realized 
the danger he was in.

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I'm quite sure that he never thought
these two men would kill him.

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Or maybe he just in such
a strange environment,

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he really just doesn't know
what he's up against.

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And it seems to the rational mind
today that it seems impossible

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that they could have killed him.

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But J. W. Milam looked up at me 
and said, well when he told me

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about this white girl he had he says,
"My friend this war's about done in now,"

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he says, "that's what we have
to fight to protect."

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And he says, I just looked at him 
and I said, "Boy you ain't

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"going to ever see the sun come up again."

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- I believe that the whole 
United States is mourning with me.

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And if the death of my son could 
mean something to the other

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unfortunate people all over the world
then for him to have died a hero

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would mean more to me than
for him to have just died.

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- The fact that the Emmett Till 
young Black man could be found

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floating down the river in Mississippi as
indeed many had been done over the years,

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just set in concrete the determination
of people to move forward.