Probably more than any other even of the early 1950s, the murder of 14 year old Chicago native Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi by two bigoted white men brought the criminal side of Jim Crow to the American public's conscience. 

Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, originally from the Tallahatchie County area in Mississippi where Money is located in the Delta region, sent Emmett to spend the summer of 1955 with his great-uncle Mose Wright who was a cotton sharecropper.

While Emmett may have been street-wise to the ways of Chicago, he was unfamiliar with the Jim Crow world of Southern white supremacy where African-American men were called "boy" to their face, African-American women were called by their first name regardless of age, and lynching was considered justice.   As we will see, his ignorance would lead to his doom in the small town of Money. 

On August 24, 1955, while hanging out with his cousins, young Emmett, was caught in a dare.  He had told the other youngsters a white teenager in a picture he carried was his girlfriend back in Chicago.  They dared him to go into a small grocery store in Money owned by the Bryant family and say hello to the white woman working there.  Emmett went in, bought some gum with a couple of pennies, and then said, "Bye, Baby" to Caroyln Bryant, the store owner's wife.

This juvenile prank led to a nightmare come to life.  Three days later, in the dead of the night, two men, Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, invaded the home of Mose Wright, dragged Emmett from the house while holding off the Wright family at gunpoint.  Over the next few hours, these two sons of the South behaved worse than animals--actually, just like barbaric savages:  they flogged Emmett, drove him to a place near the Tallahatchie River, forced him to strip naked, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then tied his mutilated dead body to a cotton gin fan stone with barbed wire and disposed of his body in the water.  Three days later on August 31, Emmett's body was found floating near the bank of the river.

When Emmett's body was sent home to Chicago for burial, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, bravely met the train at the Illinois Central Railroad Station and demanded the casket be opened.  She confirmed the identification made in Mississippi of the murdered child,  namely recognizing an initial ring on the finger of the mutilated body.  Enraging the racists in the South, especially the bloodthirsty supporters of the Jim Crow lynch justice dispensed in Money and the surrounding counties, Mrs. Till insisted her son be waked in public with an open casket.  Jet Magazine, a national African-American, made sure all of America was able to see the results of Jim Crow justice by printing photographs of Emmett in his casket.

The shame and attention brought upon Mississippi forced the authorities there to indict Bryant and Milam, but they were acquitted in a kangaroo court two weeks later consisting of an all-white jury despite Mose Wright identifying both as the men who kidnapped Emmett from his home in the middle of the night.  Sometime later, they told their story to William Bradford Huie, a major magazine journalist and author, in exchange for money since they could not be prosecuted a second time due to double jeopardy. 

In 1999, part of my vacation was a "civil rights movement sightseeing tour."   Following a much-folded map of Mississippi and the directions in my "Weary Feet, Rested Souls" guide to movement landmarks,  I turned south off westbound Mississippi Route 8 just east of the Tallahatchie River, and followed a dusty county road south for probably 15 minutes. 

Just as the road slid out of one curve and opened into a T-intersection, a scene out of history appeared in the hazy, dust-covered intersection--the abandoned Bryant Grocery where Emmett allegedly said "Bye, Baby" to the store owner's wife.

To say you could feel the evil hanging in the air as you stepped out of the car is an understatement.  There was no one in sight, no wildlife creeping around, no insects buzzing around--not even a sound to be heard.   I was struck by this sensation of nothing moving, almost as if Mother Nature was saying, "This is a place where something wicked happened."  Weeks later, when my film was developed I noticed the stream of light coming down from the heavens to the ground in front of me--a light stream not visible when I took the picture!  I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that issue.

As you might imagine, there's a lot of folklore and history intertwined in this story.  I urge you to read this Washington Post story to get another story on it.  You'll be struck by how the reporter felt the same sense of evil I felt in Money when I was near the abandoned grocery store.  Deep down, I feel like that feeling comes from the thought of Jim Crow being crushed under the foot of Justice.

===== MAY 2004 UPDATE =====

The US Department of Justice re-opened the Emmett Till murder investigation as recent information indicates more people may have been involved than Milam and Bryant.  Recent research indicates some of these additional people may still be alive.  Details can be found at the US Department of Justice web site:

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/May/04_crt_311.htm

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FYI -- Court TV's web site, www.crimelibrary.com, used this photo in their Notorious Murders story series on the Emmett Till Murder in July 2003.

For additional information, visit these great web sites:

Story on Heroism.Org's web site

Picture of Emmett Till Grave in Alsip, IL near Chicago