WEBVTT 00:00:05.251 --> 00:00:11.827 ♪ I know the one thing that we did right was the day we started to fight ♪ 00:00:12.279 --> 00:00:19.269 ♪ Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on. Hold on ♪ 00:00:19.269 --> 00:00:26.412 ♪ Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on ♪ 00:00:29.508 --> 00:00:33.218 ♪ (country music) ♪ 00:00:33.218 --> 00:00:39.810 - On August 21st, 1955 two teenagers from Chicago boarded a train and traveled south 00:00:39.810 --> 00:00:42.138 to visit family in Mississippi. 00:00:42.858 --> 00:00:45.488 - We was going down there to pick some (inaudible). 00:00:45.488 --> 00:00:49.275 I'd never picked any (inaudible) before and I was looking to do that 00:00:49.275 --> 00:00:52.516 because I told my mother that I could pick 200 pounds 00:00:52.516 --> 00:00:54.445 and she told me I couldn't, you know. 00:00:54.890 --> 00:00:57.971 So you usually go down there looking for a good time, you know. 00:00:58.413 --> 00:01:02.420 - For more than a year, racial tensions in the South had been higher than usual. 00:01:02.420 --> 00:01:06.279 Since the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education 00:01:06.279 --> 00:01:09.661 that segregated schools were unconstitutional. 00:01:16.250 --> 00:01:18.788 The decision touched a raw nerve in the white South 00:01:18.788 --> 00:01:21.890 and many organized to preserve white supremacy. 00:01:21.890 --> 00:01:25.762 (applause) 00:01:28.634 --> 00:01:32.598 For years groups like the Ku Klux Klan practiced terrorism. 00:01:33.542 --> 00:01:37.557 Despite national Black protests, public murders of Blacks were common 00:01:37.557 --> 00:01:40.207 and the mobs who committed them went unpunished. 00:01:40.956 --> 00:01:45.191 In the previous seventy years, there had been more than five hundred documented 00:01:45.191 --> 00:01:47.197 lynchings in Mississippi alone. 00:01:49.507 --> 00:01:53.919 Coming from Chicago, Curtis Jones and his cousin Emmett Till had little 00:01:53.919 --> 00:01:57.705 sense of the world they were entering when they arrived in Money, Mississippi. 00:01:57.705 --> 00:02:02.902 Emmett Till at the time, he was fourteen years old, had just graduated out of 00:02:02.902 --> 00:02:04.049 grammar school. 00:02:04.049 --> 00:02:08.630 He had some picture of white kids that he had graduate from. 00:02:08.789 --> 00:02:11.235 That was you know, female and male. 00:02:11.235 --> 00:02:14.789 So he told the boys down there, you know, that gather around the store 00:02:14.789 --> 00:02:19.420 so they must have been around about maybe ten to twelve, you know 00:02:19.420 --> 00:02:23.589 youngsters around there. That the girls was his girlfriend, you know. 00:02:23.589 --> 00:02:28.458 So one of the local boys said hey, there's a girl in that store there. 00:02:28.458 --> 00:02:31.992 He said "I bet you won't go in there and talk to her." 00:02:31.992 --> 00:02:33.977 So he went in there to get some candy. 00:02:33.977 --> 00:02:38.604 So when he was leaving out the store, after buying the candy, 00:02:38.604 --> 00:02:40.675 he told her to say, "bye baby." 00:02:41.706 --> 00:02:49.878 And the next thing I know, one of the boys came up to me and said, "Say man, 00:02:49.878 --> 00:02:55.241 "you got a crazy cousin. He just went in there and said bye to that white woman." 00:02:56.213 --> 00:03:01.259 And that's when this man I was playing checkers with this older man, 00:03:01.259 --> 00:03:03.777 I guess he must have been around about sixty or seventy. 00:03:03.777 --> 00:03:09.107 He jumps straight up and say "Boy, say y'all about to get out of here, 00:03:09.107 --> 00:03:13.010 "that lady will come out of that store and blow your brains off." 00:03:13.010 --> 00:03:17.001 ♪ (woman vocalizing)♪ 00:03:19.170 --> 00:03:23.971 - This is Moses Wright. I am the uncle of Emmitt Lewis Till. 00:03:24.454 --> 00:03:30.898 Sunday morning, about two-thirty, someone called at the door, 00:03:31.279 --> 00:03:33.177 and I said, "Who is it?" 00:03:33.676 --> 00:03:42.844 And he said "This is Mr. Bryant. I want to talk with you and the boy." 00:03:43.935 --> 00:03:49.790 And when I open this door, that was a man standing with 00:03:49.790 --> 00:03:57.268 a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand. And he asked me, 00:03:57.268 --> 00:04:01.788 "Did I have two boys, that are from Chicago?" 00:04:02.408 --> 00:04:03.694 I told him, I have. 00:04:04.256 --> 00:04:08.624 And he said "I want it, I want the boy that done all that talk". 00:04:08.624 --> 00:04:13.971 Then marched him to the car, and they asked someone there 00:04:13.971 --> 00:04:18.028 "Well this is the right boy?" And the answer was, "Yeah." 00:04:18.342 --> 00:04:20.834 And they drove toward Money. 00:04:21.941 --> 00:04:26.473 - Four days later, Emmitt Till's body was found in the Tallahatchie River. 00:04:27.628 --> 00:04:32.505 - His body was so badly damaged that we couldn't hardy just tell who he was, 00:04:32.505 --> 00:04:35.474 but he happened to have on a ring with his initial. 00:04:36.136 --> 00:04:37.591 And that cleared it up. 00:04:38.467 --> 00:04:41.538 - The body was shipped home, back north to Chicago, 00:04:41.538 --> 00:04:45.225 where Mamie Till Bradley insisted on an open casket funeral. 00:04:45.819 --> 00:04:50.109 "So all the world can see," she said, "what they did to my boy." 00:04:50.109 --> 00:05:21.401 ♪ (somber music) ♪ 00:05:21.401 --> 00:05:23.604 Jet Magazine showed Till's corpse. 00:05:23.748 --> 00:05:27.266 Beaten, mutilated, shot through the head. 00:05:29.200 --> 00:05:32.251 An entire generation of young, Black people would remember 00:05:32.251 --> 00:05:34.073 the horror of that photo. 00:05:34.073 --> 00:05:48.574 ♪ (somber music) ♪ 00:05:50.336 --> 00:05:54.424 Roy Bryant, husband of the woman in the store and J.W, Milam, 00:05:54.424 --> 00:05:58.084 her brother in law, were arrested for the murder of Emmitt Till. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:58.391 --> 00:06:01.235 The trial was held in nearby Sumner, Mississippi. 00:06:03.547 --> 00:06:08.203 Black organizations like the NAACP and The Black Press worked especially hard 00:06:08.203 --> 00:06:10.891 to keep the case in the news, to make an example of 00:06:10.891 --> 00:06:13.085 southern racism for the world. 00:06:16.055 --> 00:06:20.368 - I cover the courts in many areas of this country, but 00:06:20.368 --> 00:06:26.346 the Till case was unbelievable. I mean I just didn't get the sense 00:06:26.346 --> 00:06:28.492 of being a courtroom. 00:06:29.192 --> 00:06:32.330 It was, first place segregated. 00:06:33.330 --> 00:06:40.832 The Black Press sat at a bridge table far off from the court and 00:06:40.832 --> 00:06:44.486 the boy's mother came down. They sat her there, 00:06:44.486 --> 00:06:46.278 at the bridge table with us. 00:06:47.530 --> 00:06:49.937 - What do you intend to do here today? 00:06:50.497 --> 00:06:55.486 - To answer any questions that the attorneys might ask me to answer. 00:06:56.810 --> 00:06:59.395 - How do you think it's possible to be of help to them? 00:06:59.395 --> 00:07:04.090 - I don't know. I mean just by answering any questions that they ask me. 00:07:05.566 --> 00:07:07.891 - Do you have any evidence bearing on this case. 00:07:09.588 --> 00:07:12.049 - I do know that this is my son. 00:07:14.855 --> 00:07:18.830 - The defense argued that the body found tied to the cotton gin fan in the river 00:07:18.830 --> 00:07:22.154 was so disfigured that it could not be identified as Emmett Till. 00:07:23.824 --> 00:07:26.771 The trial took five long, hot days. 00:07:27.078 --> 00:07:30.703 The prosecution star witness was Till's uncle, Moses Wright, 00:07:30.703 --> 00:07:33.441 who testified despite threats to his life. 00:07:34.268 --> 00:07:36.433 - He was called up on too. 00:07:37.608 --> 00:07:43.483 Could he see anybody in the courtroom identified anybody in that courtroom 00:07:43.483 --> 00:07:47.794 that come to his house that night and got the Emmett Till out. 00:07:48.734 --> 00:07:53.209 He stood up and there was a tension in the courtroom 00:07:53.209 --> 00:07:56.712 and he says in his broken language, "Dar he." 00:07:58.234 --> 00:08:00.346 - Dar he. There he is. 00:08:01.236 --> 00:08:06.962 - I really didn't realize how brave my grandfather Moss Wright was, 00:08:06.962 --> 00:08:12.699 but after I got older I realized that he was a brave man. 00:08:12.699 --> 00:08:17.583 He was a mighty brave man to travel back down there, you know, 00:08:17.583 --> 00:08:22.962 among all those hostile peoples and testify, get up in court 00:08:22.962 --> 00:08:27.941 and point his finger at a white man and accuse him of murder. 00:08:28.582 --> 00:08:32.795 - As the trial ended, a defense lawyer told the jury he was quote, 00:08:32.795 --> 00:08:38.016 "Sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men." 00:08:43.030 --> 00:08:45.676 It took the jury an hour to find the men not guilty. 00:08:45.676 --> 00:08:51.673 (clapping and cheering) 00:08:51.673 --> 00:08:56.785 Months later, for a fee of $4,000, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam 00:08:56.785 --> 00:09:00.124 told their story to reporter William Bradford Huie. 00:09:02.042 --> 00:09:10.017 - Milam was startled at the belligerent attitude or the fact that young Till 00:09:10.017 --> 00:09:11.736 didn't appear to be afraid of him. 00:09:12.367 --> 00:09:15.881 He'd gone and gotten him out of bed and had him in the back of the truck 00:09:16.352 --> 00:09:20.589 and young Till never realized the danger he was in. 00:09:20.589 --> 00:09:24.123 I'm quite sure that he never thought these two men would kill him. 00:09:26.099 --> 00:09:28.839 Or maybe he just in such a strange environment, 00:09:28.839 --> 00:09:31.635 he really just doesn't know what he's up against. 00:09:32.304 --> 00:09:35.705 And it seems to the rational mind today that it seems impossible 00:09:35.705 --> 00:09:37.344 that they could have killed him. 00:09:38.061 --> 00:09:42.862 But J. W. Milam looked up at me and said, well when he told me 00:09:42.862 --> 00:09:47.964 about this white girl he had he says, "My friend this war's about done in now," 00:09:47.964 --> 00:09:50.235 he says, "that's what we have to fight to protect." 00:09:50.535 --> 00:09:53.608 And he says, I just looked at him and I said, "Boy you ain't 00:09:53.608 --> 00:09:56.254 "going to ever see the sun come up again." 00:09:57.455 --> 00:10:01.371 - I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me. 00:10:01.371 --> 00:10:05.092 And if the death of my son could mean something to the other 00:10:05.092 --> 00:10:10.764 unfortunate people all over the world then for him to have died a hero 00:10:10.764 --> 00:10:14.313 would mean more to me than for him to have just died. 00:10:14.551 --> 00:10:17.908 - The fact that the Emmett Till young Black man could be found 00:10:17.908 --> 00:10:23.004 floating down the river in Mississippi as indeed many had been done over the years, 00:10:24.759 --> 00:10:28.317 just set in concrete the determination of people to move forward.