On August 21, 1955 Emmett Till arrived in Money,
Mississippi, and went to stay at the home of his great uncle Moses Wright. The
town of Money was a street of 5 or six stores – it was not much of a town at
all. After a long day of picking cotton in the hot sun, Emmett joined a group of teenagers, seven boys and one girl, to go to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market for refreshments. Bryant's Grocery was owned by a white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant. Most of the store’s customers were black sharecroppers and their children. While standing with his cousins and some friends outside of the store, Emmett bragged that his girlfriend back home was white. Emmett's African American companions, disbelieving him, dared Emmett to ask the white woman sitting behind the store counter for a date. He went in, bought some bubble gum, and on the way out was heard saying, "Bye, baby," to the woman. There were no witnesses in the store, but Carolyn Bryant, the woman behind the counter, claimed that he grabbed her, made advances, and then wolf-whistled at her as he walked out. Roy Bryant, the proprietor of the store and the woman's husband, returned from a business trip a few days later and found out how Emmett had spoken to his wife (The death of Emmett Till).
Mississippi, and went to stay at the home of his great uncle Moses Wright. The
town of Money was a street of 5 or six stores – it was not much of a town at
all. After a long day of picking cotton in the hot sun, Emmett joined a group of teenagers, seven boys and one girl, to go to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market for refreshments. Bryant's Grocery was owned by a white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant. Most of the store’s customers were black sharecroppers and their children. While standing with his cousins and some friends outside of the store, Emmett bragged that his girlfriend back home was white. Emmett's African American companions, disbelieving him, dared Emmett to ask the white woman sitting behind the store counter for a date. He went in, bought some bubble gum, and on the way out was heard saying, "Bye, baby," to the woman. There were no witnesses in the store, but Carolyn Bryant, the woman behind the counter, claimed that he grabbed her, made advances, and then wolf-whistled at her as he walked out. Roy Bryant, the proprietor of the store and the woman's husband, returned from a business trip a few days later and found out how Emmett had spoken to his wife (The death of Emmett Till).
Around 2:30 a.m. on August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant, Carolyn's husband, and his half-brother J. W. Milam, kidnapped Emmett Till from Moses Wright's home. The pair demanded to see the boy. Despite pleas from Wright, they forced Emmett into their car. Milam turned to Moses Wright and said, “How old are you preacher?” Moses Wright replied, “sixty-four,” and in response, Milam said, “You make any trouble you’ll never live to be sixty-five” (The Murder of Emmett Till). Milam was a hard drinking man with a reputation of being tough on anyone who got in his way. He was an imposing man of six feet two inches, weighing 235 pounds. Milam prided himself on knowing how to "handle" blacks. After driving around in the Memphis night, and perhaps beating Emmett in a tool house behind Milam's residence, they drove him down to the Tallahatchie River. They made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river (The death of Emmett Till). Wright went looking for him, but fearful of his life, neglected to call the police. Curtis Jones got word back to the police, and Emmett’s mother, Mamie was alerted that her son went missing. On August 29, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant were arrested on kidnapping charges in LeFlore County in connection with Till's disappearance. They were jailed in Greenwood, Mississippi (The Murder of Emmett Till).
On August 31, three days later, Emmett Till's decomposed corpse was pulled from Mississippi's Tallahatchie River. His corpse was so disfigured that Moses Wright identified the body from a ring with the initials L.T. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Till's mother, Mamie Bradley, requested it be sent back to Chicago. On September 1, Mississippi Governor Hugh White, ordered local officials to "fully prosecute" Milam and Bryant in the Till case (Vox).
On September 2, Mamie Till received Emmett’s casket in Chicago. She was surrounded by family and photographers who snapped her photo as she collapsed in grief at the sight of the casket. When her boy was killed, Mamie turned to the strength of her family and faith. "When I began to make the announcement that Emmett had been found and how he was found, the whole house began to scream and to cry. And that's when I realized that this was a load that I was going to have to carry. I wouldn't get any help carrying this load." – Mamie Till (The Murder of Emmett Till).
Horrified by the mutilation of her son's body yet determined that it would not happen again, Mamie made a stunning decision to have an open casket funeral (Vox)."I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till," she said. Some 50,000 people streamed in to view Emmett's corpse in Chicago, with many people leaving in tears or fainting at the sight and smell of the body. They said that about one in every five had to be assisted out of the building (The Murder of Emmett Till).
Emmett Till was buried at Burr Oak Cemetery on September 6 (The Murder of Emmett Till).