What Is Justice? The Harrowing Murder of Emmett Till and His Immortality As a Martyr

14 year old Emmett Till at his Chicago Home 1955

 Money, Mississippi, August 28, 1955 ― “A Negro man with a ‘Northern Brogue’ came into the store,” said Carolyn Bryant. “The Negro man came to the candy counter and ordered bubble gum, when I put out my hand for the money, he grabbed my hand, I pulled it away and he said, ‘hey baby how about a date’.” She continued to describe the incident to the court. “I turned toward the back of the store, but he caught me at the cash register and put both hands around my waist and said, ‘what’s the matter baby can’t you take it?’ Bryant said she pulled away and the Negro used words she refused to repeat and then told her he had been with White women before.  

This is what “pretty, young mother,” Carolyn Bryant, 21 told the court during her husband and brother-in-law's murder trial in September of 1955. Defense attorney Sidney Carleton, one of five attorneys for the two men, asked the jury where the motive for killing Till. He argued that Carolyn Bryant’s testimony did not implicate Emmett Till and added that,” if Mose (Wright, Till’s uncle) knew that Emmett till had done something down there (the Money store) he’d have whipped him, himself.” 

This was Mississippi 1955 the vivid, lurid description of any Negro’s behavior toward a White woman was unnecessary to guarantee the two White men on trial would be acquitted, but it certainly didn’t hurt. Still the jury only took one hour to acquit and only that long because they all wanted a free soda from the court. 

This was the Jim Crow south. Crimes like this happened all the time and families never received justice, African Americans weren’t just 2nd class citizens they were less than nothing. A jury only wanted a free soda pop, perhaps we should be happy it went to a jury. 70 years later and we can question whether Emmett Till’s family ever got justice.  

Proof of that might be that in 1956 Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were paid $4,000 by Look Magazine to talk about how they had kidnapped Emmett Till from his uncle’s house, beat him, shot him in the head and tied a cotton gin fan around his neck and threw him into the Tallahatchie River. Of course, this is 1955 so whether they intended it or not there was the overt racism of the killers and the subtle racism of the writer who made the two killers' sympathetic figures. Veterans of World War Two but poor working men confronted with a mouthy Negro boy who thought he was good as they were.  

However, Karnic justice is often messier. In 1956 already reeling because the Blacks of the cotton patches were boycotting the store and they had gone out of business. After the Look article came out though even other racists in the most racist state stopped supporting the two brothers. They forced to look for work in Texas and Louisiana but due to threats and reputation the family moved a lot.  

The brothers were both convicted for financial crimes like food stamp fraud, using stolen credit cards and writing bad checks. Milam died of spinal cancer in 1980; Roy Bryant died from cancer in 1994. Two of Carolyn and Roy Bryant’s sons died before she did. Roy Bryant Jr. died in a Houston hospital in 1995 and Frank Bryant in 2010.  

 

In 1975 Roy and Carolyn Bryant divorced. She married twice more. Once to Griffin Chandler who died in 1988. She was also married to David Donham at some point but divorced. She reportedly told author Tim Tyson, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” and recanted her testimony at the 1955 trial. Later she wrote a memoir titled “More than a Wolf Whistle” in which she calls herself as much of a victim as Emmett till. She died in 2023. 

Today Emmett Till is a martyr to the cause of racial justice. His mother Mamie made sure her son wasn’t just another victim of the Jim Crow system. Their legacy exists in Sumner, Mississippi with the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument and the Emmett Hill Interpretive Center dedicated to advancing civil rights forward while telling the story of murdered son and a mother who would not let his death be in vain.