Luckily or not for Emmet, the women’s husband, Roy Bryant, and her brother, J.W. Milam, were away shipping shrimps across the states, although when he cam back and found out his mind was full off vengeance.
Thus he turned up at Mose Wright’s house (Emmet Till’s Great Uncle), and demanded to see the boy. Mose suggested that the two men give Emmet ‘a good whipping’, and also explained that Emmet was ignorant of the Mississippi lifestyle, fearing that worse may happen. What happened next however stunned the world – Emmet was taken to Tallahatchie River, and ordered to carry a seventy-four pound cotton gin fan for a sizeable distance. He was then stripped and beaten and his eye was gouged out – one side of his face had collapsed completely – and was then shot in what remained of his head. The body was found a short time afterwards, and the only way Mose Wright could identify it was by an initialled ring. Mamie Bradley (Emmet Till’s mother) delayed the burial of the body, and then proceeded to have an open casket funeral, to let “the world see what they did to my boy”.
As aforementioned, in the south, segregation was rife, and so was discrimination against blacks – this was mainly due to the slave past of the southern states. Until the abolition of slavery throughout the USA in 1865, all blacks in the south were slaves to white plantation owners (the reason that out of a population of nine million in the south, four million were afro-American). Yet despite the fact the south were ordered to abolish slavery, blacks were still discriminated against – something that they raged against for a hundred years, before they were granted equality. Some southern states even passed laws – notably the Jim Crow laws, which kept white supremacy in the south, and also kept out the north - to keep blacks ‘in their place’, and under white overlordship; poll tax and poll tests stopped many uneducated and poor black people from voting. Also, there was major (and legalised in 1896, due to a supreme court ruling, stating that if facilities must be separate they can, as long as they are equal) segregation in the south, with everything from schools to drinking fountains being separate between blacks and whites. In this way, blacks had a hard life in the south, and found it difficult to protest, due to both the legal aspects, and the illegal (e.g. Ku Klux Klan).
So why exactly was Emmet Till killed? Was there another reason, besides simple revenge? Of course, the most obvious reason would be that Roy Bryant wanted to revenge Emmett’s rudeness to his wife – especially as Emmet was black. Such things are not uncommon, although the intensity of this particular incident is; for example, if the wife of a KKK member is refused the time from a black person, then that black person may have their family harassed, beaten, or even lynched (executed illegally). This last point brings in another the Ku Klux Klan. They are renowned for public lynching, and some groups make their regular, some make them rare (these could be described as ‘ritual killings’, though not necessarily performed by the KKK). Perhaps it was time for the KKK group operating around Money thought it was time for black people to be given another warning to behave; and Emmet Till was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and managed to show ‘rudeness’ to the wife of a KKK member, who was thus given the task of brutally murdering Emmet, who in this case became a convenient scapegoat.
Of course, Bryant and his accomplice may have carried out the murder for the same ideals, as the KKK had, yet not been working directly for them. Bryant and Milam may have had extremist ideas about what should happen to black people, and may want to add a personal message for them to behave themselves, and keep whites in superiority (over blacks).
On the other side of cynicism, there is the theory that black extremist groups may even have used Emmet Till as a catalyst for a revolution in America – there have been reports that the ring found on Emmet was planted by one of these groups. Indeed, if this was the case, then from whatever black group these ideas emanated from, have got what the wanted; from this incident the civil rights movement started.
Mentioned above was the ‘other’ side of cynicism – the first side is that Emmet in fact did not do what was reported (whistling etc). The person who told Bryant and Milam about the occurrences was probably white, and thus may have been of the same mind as other white extremists; this makes the evidence given unreliable. This would put an entirely different spin on the story, and add substance to the theory of Emmet being a scapegoat for the KKK’s frustrations and sociopath-like ideals.
As shown by the reasons mentioned, there are possible many explanations as to why Emmet Till was murdered. Was it a simple revenge attack? Was it a personal racist attack, or maybe an organised attack on a random black person, in this case Emmet Till? Or on the cynical side, is the whole thing a farce to put black people in their place, or one to catalyse a black uproar? Indeed the point last mentioned did in fact happen; many black rights activists, during the sixties, were influenced by the death of Emmet Till, and many took the vengeance attack as an act of war – such people could include Malcolm X, who had very strong and extremist views about equality.
Despite the fact that this is a somewhat cynical view, one hint of the organised side of the murder is that the authorities wanted to bury the body quickly; either because they felt that the people who cared about the death (black people) would be rattled enough already, and thus media coverage wouldn’t be good for the whole idea of putting black people in their place. Or maybe the authorities felt that the KKK possibly had gone too far, and needed to hide their trail (it is said that the authorities always knew about the KKK, yet did nothing), possibly to make their job easier by keeping in cooperation with them. Whichever of these it is, I believe that all along the police knew who orchestrated the murder – likely a white extremist group, such as the KKK – and wanted to keep them out of the media spotlight; of course, the whole white hierarchy was a law unto itself, and was waging a protracted and ultimately futile war against the black race. For this purpose, extremist groups would come in useful, and would benefit from police cover-ups and protection from the media spotlight. To back this up, the two murderers themselves were not charged with murder or kidnapping, on the count that the body could not be identified another sign of the white system being in complete control. After this whole episode, the state of Mississippi became a symbol of white supremacy over people of the black race – like a cancer this spread throughout the southern states for decades longer. And indeed, even today these white supremacy ideals still exist.
