Emmett Till 1955

" I know the one thing that we did right
was the day we started to fight. Keep

"your eyes on the prize. Hold on. Hold on.
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.."

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

to visit family in Mississippi.

- We was going down there to pick some
(inaudible). I'd never picked any

(inaudible) before and I was looking
to do that because I told my mother

that I could pick 200 pounds
and she told me I couldn't ,

you know.

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

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

usual. Since the Supreme Court
ruled in Brown Vs. Board of

Education, that segregated
schools were unconstitutional.

The decision touched a raw nerve
in the white South and many

organized to preserve white supremacy.

For years groups like the Ku
Klux Klan practiced terrorism.

Despite national black protests,
public murders of blacks were

common and the (inaudible) who
committed them went unpunished.

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

lynchings in Mississippi alone.

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

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

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

grammar school.

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

That was you know, female and male.

So he told the boys down there,
hey you know, (inaudible) the store.

So it must have been around about
maybe ten to twelve, you know

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

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

there.

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

So he went in there
to get some candy.

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

"Bye baby".

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

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

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

man- I guess he must have been around
about sixty or seventy. He jumps straight

up and say "Boy, say y'all about to get
out of here, say that lady'll come out of

"that store and blow your brains off."

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

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

I said, "Who is it?'
And he said "This

"is Mr.Bryant. I want to
talk with you and the boy.

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

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

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

I told him, I have.

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

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

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

And they drove toward Money.

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

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

who he was. But he happened to
have on a ring with his initial.

And that set it up.

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

Mamie Till Bradley insisted
on an open casket funeral.

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

“♪ (upbeat music) ♪”

Jet Magazine showed Till's
corpse. Beaten, mutilated,

shot through the head.

An entire generation of young,
black people would remember

the horror of that photo.

“♪ (somber music) ♪”

Roy Bryant, husband of the woman
in the store. And J.W, MIlam, her

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

The trial was held in
nearby Sumner Mississippi.

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

To keep the case in the news, to make
an example of southern racism for

the world.

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

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

of being a courtroom.

It was, first place segregated.

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

boys mother came down.
They sat her there, at the

bridge table with us.

- What do you intend to do here today?

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

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

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

- Do you have any evidence
bearing on this case.

- I do know that this is my son.