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Emmett Till (1941-1955)
Jacob Smith
Composition II
Professor Baird
Mar. 14, 2007
Emmett Till (1941-1955)
Emmett (Bobo) Till was the victim of a vicious racially motivated murder in Money, Mississippi in 1955. Till was a teenage
African-American boy from Chicago’s South Side; a middle-class black neighborhood. In August 1955, Emmett went
to visit his uncle Moses Wright in Money along with his cousin Wheeler Parker (Jaynes, 2005, p.817). The South at that time
had high levels of racial tension due to the United State Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of “Brown
v. The Board of Education”, which desegregated schools (Mrs. Spangenberg, 1999).
After bragging about having a white girlfriend back in Chicago, Emmett was dared to ask a white woman clerk, Carolyn
Bryant, for a date. Being an outgoing and naive teenager Emmett did so, outraging Roy Bryant, the grocery clerk’s
husband. On August 28, 1955 Roy along with his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Emmett, beat him severely, shot him, and
threw his body into a local river with a cotton gin fan barb wired around neck.
After the discovery of the body the two men were arrested, but later acquitted by an all-male, all-white jury that only
deliberated for one hour. Following the trial Roy and J.W. talked openly of how they had murdered the boy, and the jurors
spoke on how they thought the killing was justified (Jaynes, 2005, p. 817).
The lynching of Emmett Till aroused the nation’s awareness of racial brutality and injustice and also helped
spark the American Civil Rights Movement (Jaynes, 2005, p.143).
References
Jaynes, Gerald D. (2005). Brooks, Gwendolyn. In encyclopedia of african american society. (Vol. 1, p. 143). California:
Sage Publications.
Jaynes, Gerald D. (2005). Till, Emmett. In encyclopedia of african american society. (Vol. 2, p. 817). California: Sage
Publications.
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