Emmett Till murderers make magazine confession
On January 24 1956 Look magazine publishes the confessions of J.W.Milam and Roy Bryant two white men from Mississippi who were acquitted in the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till an African-American teenager from Chicago.In the Look article titled The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi the men detailed how they beat Till with a gun shot him and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River with a heavy cotton-gin fan attached with barbed wire to his neck to weigh him down.
The two killers were paid a reported 4000 for their participation in the article.In August 1955 14-year-old Till whose nickname was Bobo traveled to Mississippi to visit relatives and stay at the home of his great-uncle Moses Wright.On August 24 Till went into Bryants Grocery and Meat Market in Money Mississippi to buy candy.At some point he allegedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant a white woman who ran the store with her husband Roy who was away at the time.
Tills seemingly harmless actions carried weight in an era when prejudice and discrimination against blacks was persistent throughout the segregated South.In the early hours of August 28 Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W.Milam abducted Emmett Till from his great-uncles home.The men were soon arrested but maintained their innocence.
On August 31 Tills decomposed body was found in the Tallahatchie River.On September 3 Tills mother held an open-casket funeral for her son in order to bring attention to his murder.An estimated 50000 mourners attended.
Afterward Jet magazine published graphic photos of Tills corpse.On September 19 the kidnapping and murder trial of Bryant and Milam began in Sumner Mississippi.Five days later on September 23 the all-white all-male jury acquitted the two men of murder after deliberating for little over an hour.The jury claimed it wouldve reached its decision even more quicklydespite overwhelming evidence that the defendants were guiltyhad it not taken a soda break.
The acquittal caused international outrage and helped spark the American civil rights movement.Milam and Bryant were never brought to justice and both later died of cancer.In 2004 the U.S.Justice Department reopened the case amid suggestions that other peoplesome of whom are still alivemight have participated in the crime.
Tills body was exhumed by the FBI in 2005 and an autopsy was performed.In 2007 a grand jury decided not to seek an indictment against additional individuals.
