Token for membership in the Ku Klux Klan, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Anonymous Gift. Tyson that she had lied about this entire event. At 82, some 60 years later, Bryant, confessed to Duke University professor Timothy B. Carolyn Bryant testified in court that Till had grabbed her hand, and after she pulled away, he followed her behind the counter, clasped her waist, and using vulgur language, told her that he had been with white women before. Particularly for Black males, who found themselves under constant threat of attack or death for sexual advances towards white women – mostly imagined – Till’s murder reverberated a need for immediate change. They later sold their story for $4,000 to Look magazine– bragging about the murder as a form of Southern justice implemented to protect white womanhood.įor African Americans, the murder of Till was evidenceof the decades-old codes of violence exacted upon Black men and women for breaking the rules of white supremacy in the Deep South.

Bryant and Milam maintained their innocence and would eventually be acquitted of the murder by an all-white, all male jury. Milam ran into Emmett’s uncle’s home where he was staying, dragged Till from his bed, beat him to the point of disfigurement, and shot him before tossing his body into the Tallahatchie River with a cotton-gin fan attached with barbed wire laced to his neck to weigh him down. According to court documents, Till, who was visiting family for the summer in Money, Mississippi, from Chicago, purchased two-cents worth of bubble gum from the Bryant Grocery store and said, “Bye, baby” over his shoulder to Carolyn Bryant as he exited the store. Milam, forcing the American public to grapple with the menace of violence in the Jim Crow South. The alleged teasing of white store clerk Carolyn Bryant by the 14 year-old African American Emmett Till led to his brutal murder at the hands of Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother, J.W.

Death of Innocence by Mamie Till-Mobley