Emmett Till, a black man, was kidnapped and murdered on or about August 28, 1955, by two White men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milani, after Till allegedly whistled at Bryant's wife, Carolyn, while shopping at the Bryants' store. An all-White and all-male jury acquitted the two men of the murder. The two men later admitted to the killing in a 1956 Look magazine article and told how they murdered Till. They couldn't be prosecuted again because of the legal bar against double jeopardy.
Milam died in 1980 and Bryant in 1990. No one else was ever indicted or prosecuted for involvement with the kidnapping or murder.
After Till's brutal murder, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted that her son's brutally mutilated body be shown in an open coffin during the public viewing and funeral in Chicago. "Let the world see what I have seen," she said at the time. Photos of the battered body ran in JET Magazine, shocking the country and the world about the horror of racism in America (JET, Sept. 15, 1955). The Till case became a fiery spark for the Civil Rights Movement.
Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley died in 2003 at age 81. She spent her entire life laboring to win her son justice.
I had originally planned to title my blog, Let The World See What I Have Seen. But I thought that would be disrespectful.
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