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Emmett Till

August 28, 1955, Leflore and Tallahatchie counties, Mississippi

Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old resident of Chicago, Illinois. He was raised by his mother, Mamie Till Bradley.

View records at National Archives

Case summary

This is a partial release of the federal records concerning Emmett Till. Brief descriptions of the contents of each file in this case are below the summary.

Incident

Emmett Till
Emmett Till

On August 21, 1955, Emmett Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to visit family. He stayed at the home of his great-aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Mose Wright, who lived outside of Money in Leflore County.

In 2011 Library of Congress oral history interviews, Till’s cousins, Simeon Wright and Wheeler Parker, said they and Till decided to drive to Money just before dusk on August 24. The three youths were with at least three other teens. The group decided to buy a few items from Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Simeon Wright, 12 at the time, recalled that the group purchased their items, left, and no one said “anything out of line.”

Wright said in his oral history interview that Carolyn Bryant, the white, 21-year-old wife of store-owner Roy Bryant, exited the store shortly after Till and the others. As she walked by, according to both Wright and Parker, Till whistled at Bryant. Parker, who was 16, said that Till “had no idea, didn’t have any idea the danger” of the whistle. Wright said the entire group, frightened “half to death,” ran to their car as quickly as possible and drove back to the Wright home.

Carolyn Bryant testified during an evidentiary hearing on September 22, 1955 that Till took her hand while he was at the cash register and asked, “How about a date, baby?” Bryant stated she tried to make her way to the back of the store, but Till “caught” her, put his hands on her waist, and told her not to be afraid because he had been “with white women before.” Bryant testified that she called for her sister-in-law, Juanita Milam, and ran outside to retrieve her gun from her car. Once outside, Bryant stated, Till whistled at her.

Four days later, at around 2 a.m. on August 28, 64-year-old Mose Wright woke to a knock on his door. During the September 1955 trial, Wright testified he got up and asked who was there. “This is Mr. Bryant,” the person answered, “I want to talk to you and that boy.” Wright opened the door and saw Bryant and J.W. Milam, Bryant’s half-brother. Milam held a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.

Wright said the two men entered the home and began searching the bedrooms. When they reached the second bedroom, they found Till, who was sharing a room with Simeon Wright. Mose Wright stated that Milam said, “If it is not the right boy, we are going to bring him back and put him in the bed.” Milam ordered Till to get up. Wright said that Till got dressed and went with Bryant and Milam.

As Milam was leaving, Wright testified, he threatened Wright that he would not “live to get to be 65” if he said anything about Milam and Bryant being there. Elizabeth Wright pleaded with Bryant and Milam to release Till, offering to pay any price. Mose Wright said neither man responded. They took Till, put him in the car, and drove away in the direction of Money.

In October 1955, journalist William Bradford Huie interviewed Bryant and Milam for a Look magazine article published in January 1956. Milam told Huie that he and Bryant planned to “just whip” Till to “scare some sense into him.” Huie’s interview notes reflect that Milam said he knew a cliff by the Mississippi River with a 100-foot drop. “I thought I’d stand this n—r up there on that bluff in the dark,” Milam told Huie. He continued, “I thought I’d whip him up there on that bluff and threaten to knock him in – and if that wouldn’t scare him nothing else would.” Huie’s interview notes and article indicate Milam and Bryant drove approximately 80 miles with Till in search of the cliff, abandoning their efforts after three hours.

Milam told Huie that he and Bryant returned to Milam’s home with Till, arriving around 5 a.m. They brought Till to the tool shed behind Milam’s house and took turns pistol-whipping him. According to Huie’s notes, Milam stated that Till “kept telling me he had slept with white women… and that he was as good as I was.” It was at that point, Milam allegedly told Huie, that he decided “there wasn’t anything else to do but kill him.”

Milam and Bryant told Huie that they forced Till into the truck bed and drove approximately 30 miles west to a ginning company. The men ordered Till to retrieve a 74-pound cotton gin fan and load it into the car. They then drove to an isolated bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered Till to take the cotton gin fan out of the vehicle and undress. According to Huie’s notes, Milam said he and Bryant proceeded to question Till, asking if he was “still as good” as them. When Till answered yes, Milam said he shot Till in the head. Milam and Bryant then tied the cotton gin fan to Till’s neck using barbed wire, and rolled his body into the water.

Aftermath

Roy Bryant was arrested by the Leflore County sheriff that same afternoon for kidnapping Till. J.W. Milam was arrested the following day. Bryant and Milam both admitted to abducting Till from the Wright home but claimed they had released Till alive. The sheriff had a warrant for Carolyn Bryant’s arrest for kidnapping dated August 29 but never served it. The warrant was not public knowledge until it surfaced in 2022 through a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Chicago field office received a call at 7 p.m. on August 28 alerting them to Till’s abduction. On August 31, Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. His identity was confirmed by family members who recognized a ring with the initials “L.T.” that Till inherited from his deceased father, Louis Till. The FBI informed DOJ Civil Rights Section Chief Arthur Caldwell of the discovery of Till’s body. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. in a September 6, 1955 memo that Caldwell had expressed that the “facts did not indicate a violation of the Civil Rights Statute and no investigation should be conducted.”

Tallahatchie County officials charged Bryant and Milam with murder. Even after signing Till’s death certificate, Tallahatchie County Sheriff H.C. Strider questioned the identification of Till and suggested that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) “planted” the body. Till’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley, told the media, “I’ve seen the body and what mother wouldn’t know her own son. It looks like they will do anything down there to cause confusion and keep a white man from being punished for killing a Negro.”

Bradley held an open-casket funeral in Chicago for her son. An estimated 50,000 mourners viewed Till’s body before he was laid to rest on September 6. A photo of Till’s bloated and beaten face and body appeared in Jet magazine, attracting national and international attention to the lynching.

On September 6, a Tallahatchie County grand jury indicted Bryant and Milam on murder and kidnapping charges. Twelve days later, the trial of Bryant and Milam, who pleaded not guilty, began in Sumner, Mississippi. Governor-elect J. P. Coleman appointed Robert B. Smith III as a special prosecutor to serve alongside District Attorney Gerald Chatham. The white community in Tallahatchie raised money to pay for Bryant and Milam’s defense. An all-white jury consisting of 12 men and one alternate was selected. The courtroom was segregated and crowded, with around 400 people packed in it at one point. The judge permitted Black journalists, who were usually relegated to the balcony, to sit on the ground floor near a separate table for white journalists. Bryant and Milam’s family were allowed to sit with them during the trial. Photographs of the trial show Bryant and Milam holding their children while their wives sat beside them. The proceedings lasted five days.

Mose Wright testified for the prosecution, identifying Milam and Bryant as the men who took Till at gunpoint. Willie Reed, an 18-year-old Black sharecropper, testified for the prosecution that around 7 a.m., he saw a truck pass by with four white men in the cab and three Black men in the back with another Black individual he later said resembled Emmett Till. Reed said that as he walked down the road he saw the truck parked near a barn owned by J.W. Milam’s brother Leslie, heard someone screaming in the barn, and saw Milam exit with a .45 pistol.

Mamie Till Bradley traveled to Mississippi to testify, positively identifying her son as the person pulled from the Tallahatchie River. Leflore County Sheriff George Smith and Deputy Sheriff John Ed Cothran both testified that Bryant and Milam admitted to them that they had taken Till from his great-uncle’s home.

Carolyn Bryant was allowed to testify under oath but outside the presence of a jury. Presiding Judge Curtis M. Swango ruled her testimony inadmissible, noting that the defense had not substantially linked the events inside Bryant’s Grocery to the murder of Till.

Bryant and Milam did not testify. Newspapers reported that the defense closed with the statement: “Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I’m sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men.”

On September 23, the jury returned a not guilty verdict after three ballots and 68 minutes of deliberation. A jury spokesman noted that, based on expert testimony, “the body was too decomposed to be identified,” and therefore the jury voted to acquit. One juror was overheard stating afterward: “We wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t stopped to drink pop.” White spectators could be heard cheering while Bryant and Milam celebrated with their families.

Leflore County deputy sheriffs arrested Bryant and Milam immediately after their acquittal in connection with the kidnapping from Mose Wright’s home. The Leflore grand jury, also consisting entirely of white men, returned a “no bill” on the kidnapping charges.

Members of the press reported that two Black farmers who witnessed the killing, Leroy Collins and Henry Lee Loggins, were abducted and jailed to prevent them from testifying.  The FBI contacted special prosecutor Smith, who inquired with local and state officials to investigate the validity of the claims. In a Tri-State Defender interview Collins said he worked for Milam and was sent by Milam’s brother to Clarksdale on a job with Loggins during the trial.

Look magazine published Huie’s article, which he called “the true account of the slaying,” on January 24, 1956. In the article, Bryant and Milam confessed their involvement and revealed key details not disclosed during the trial, or that contradicted trial testimony. Huie’s own notes and correspondence with his editor indicate that Huie understood there to be four individuals involved in Till’s kidnapping and murder.

After the article was published, Bryant and Milam denied speaking to Huie about their culpability in the killing. “Consent and Release” agreements from October 28, 1955 show that Huie paid the Bryants and Milam $3,150 for the rights to use the content of the interview for any “literary or dramatic work” relating to Till’s death. The publication of the article also sparked local backlash against Bryant and Milam. Many in the community boycotted Bryant’s store, forcing him to sell it and move to Indianola. He unsuccessfully applied for multiple jobs, including police officer. Milam and his family also moved from the area to Cleveland, Mississippi and continued to farm.

On February 15, 1956, responding to a citizen request for an investigation, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said that because Till had not been transported across state lines during his kidnapping, “this Bureau has no jurisdiction to conduct an investigation.”

Roy and Carolyn Bryant divorced in 1975. Milam died on December 31, 1980. Roy Bryant died on September 1, 1994.

On May 10, 2004, the DOJ announced a reinvestigation of Till’s case as part of its Cold Case Initiative. The DOJ concluded that any federal charges were barred by the statute of limitations. The FBI’s inquiry was also an effort to identify any prosecutable state crimes. The FBI exhumed Till’s body and conducted an autopsy. In February 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Carolyn Bryant, then remarried and known as Carolyn Bryant Donham, on charges of manslaughter.

In 2008, historian Timothy B. Tyson said Donham had revealed in an interview that Till had not touched her or made any comments toward her. Tyson said Donham added, “nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.” The DOJ reopened its Till investigation in 2017 to determine if Donham had recanted her previous accounts. Donham denied to the FBI that she had ever told Tyson her initial accounts were untrue and stated that she had no additional information about the case.

In its 2021 memorandum closing the 2017 investigation, the DOJ stated that the Till case was not prosecutable because there was no evidence a living person was involved in Till’s abduction and death, there were no federal hate crime laws in 1955, and the statute of limitations on the civil rights criminal laws at that time had expired. In 2022, another Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Donham in connection with the Till case. Donham died on April 25, 2023.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. The Act, reauthorized in 2016, authorizes and funds reinvestigations of civil rights cold cases.

Bradley, then known as Mamie Till-Mobley, died at age 81 on January 6, 2003.

Media Gallery

Case summaries are compiled using government records and archival primary source material. These include, but are not limited to, investigative records, arrest reports, newspaper articles, court filings, census records, birth and death certificates, transcripts, and press releases. In many cases, the records contain contradictory assertions.

In addition to the incident files associated with this case, this summary relied on the following:

Sources

U.S. Find a Grave Index

Trial Transcript, State of Mississippi v. J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, Circuit Court, Second District of Tallahatchie County, September 19-23, 1955

Wheeler Parker, 2011 Oral History Interview, Library of Congress

Simeon Wright, 2011 Oral History Interview, Library of Congress

John Whitten Jr. Papers, Florida State University Libraries Special Collections

Joseph Tobias Papers, Florida State University Libraries Special Collections

Davis Houck Papers, Florida State University Libraries Special Collections

“Storekeeper Held for Abduction of Chicago Negro Boy,” Shreveport Journal, August 29, 1955

“Negro Youth is Still Missing,” Greenwood Commonwealth, August 30, 1955

“Will Mississippi Whitewash the Emmett Till Slaying?” Jet magazine, September 22, 1955

William Bradford Huie, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,” Look magazine, January 24, 1956

Maria Newman, “U.S. to Reopen Investigation of Emmett Till’s Murder in 1955,” New York Times, May 10, 2004

Arielle Dreher, “Remembering Emmett Till: A Boy Who Changed America,” Jackson Free Press, August 26, 2015

Alan Blinder, “U.S. Reopens Emmett Till Investigation, Almost 63 Years After His Murder,” New York Times, July 12, 2018

“What Happened to the Key Figures in the Emmett Till Case?” Clarion Ledger, September 13, 2018

Jerry Mitchell, “What Did Carolyn Bryant Say and When?” Mississippi Clarion Ledger, September 26, 2018

Nick Judin and Donna Ladd, “FBI Veterans Explain 1955 Investigation of Emmett Till That Never Was,” Mississippi Free Press, June 22, 2022

Praveena Somasundaram, “Grand Jury Won’t Indict White Woman Linked to Emmett Till’s Lynching,” Washington Post, August 9, 2022

Margalit Fox, “Carolyn Bryant Donham Dies at 88; Her Words Doomed Emmett Till,” New York Times, April 27, 2023

Gillian Brockell, “Journalist Withheld Information about Emmett Till’s Murder, Documents Show,” Washington Post, August 29, 2024

File descriptions