DETAILS IN TILL KILLING A MYSTERY
The investigation into the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till nearly 70 years ago ended as it began, with a mystery that might never be solved. All these decades later, it’s still not even clear whether the gruesome homicide was the work of a pair of racist brutes or a larger group of conspirators.
Two White men publicly confessed to the slaying after being acquitted by an allWhite jury in Mississippi in 1955, but a Justice Department report released last week said that at least one other unnamed person was involved in Till’s abduction. Experts who have studied the case believe others participated, from a half-dozen to more than 14.
The lack of answers to decades-old, nagging questions has created a void for Till’s family. Thelma Wright Edwards, a relative who recalled putting diapers on Till as a child, talked about the emptiness left by the decision to end what will likely be the final investigation into his death.
“Nothing was settled. The case is closed, and we have to go on from here,” she told a news conference in Chicago.
In a sense, the nation as a whole was denied a proper ending to an awful tale because the true story of one of the most infamous hate crimes of the last century may never be known.
Till, who was 14 and from Chicago, went to Mississippi to visit relatives during the summer of 1955. On Aug. 24, witnesses said he whistled at a White woman in a rural grocery store, a violation of the South’s racist societal codes at the time. In return, he was rousted from bed and abducted from a great-uncle’s home in the predawn hours four days later.
With relatives uncertain over the teen’s whereabouts and fearing the worst, Till’s body — weighted down with a large fan from a cotton gin — was pulled from the Tallahatchie River three days later. Roy Bryant, whose thenwife Carolyn was the subject of Till’s whistle, and Roy Bryant’s half-brother, J.W. Milam, were charged with murder and on trial before an allWhite jury within two weeks.
Although only Bryant and Milam were charged, Black teenager Willie Reed testified during their trial that he saw a group of White men and Black men in a truck with a person he later realized was Till. Till’s greatuncle testified that Bryant and Milam were accompanied by a third person with a voice “lighter” than a man’s when they abducted Till, indicating the possible presence of a woman.