Emmett Till

Emmett Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois U.S. to Mamie Carthan and Louis Till. His parents separated when Emmett was very young and he was raised by his mother and grandmother.

He contracted polio as a young boy because of which he developed a persistent stutter. He grew up to be a happy child who loved to play pranks.

His mother went on to marry a man called “Pink” Bradley though this marriage too did not last long.

For several years Emmett and his mother lived alone in Chicago's South Side, near extended relatives. His mother was a very brave woman who managed to get a job as a civilian clerk for the U.S. Air Force and was able to provide a fairly comfortable life for her only son.

Emmett was a well built boy. Stocky and muscular at the age of 14, he was already beginning to look like an adult.

Emmett arrived at Mississippi on August 21, 1955. Wright was a sharecropper and part-time minister, and while he was busy with his work, Emmett would play with his cousins and the other black boys in the neighborhood.

On August 24, 1955 Emmett and the other teenagers went to buy some refreshments from Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, which was owned by a young white couple, 24-year-old Roy Bryant and his 21-year-old wife Carolyn.

According to one of the boys Emmett was playing with, Emmett had boasted to his playmates that way back at home he had a white girlfriend. The other boys did not believe him and dared him to go and speak to the white lady at the shop.

What happened afterwards inside the shop is disputed. Different sources give different accounts of what transpired. While the white woman in question, Carolyn, stated that the boy flirted with her, touched her hand and even grabbed her by the waist, Emmett Till's cousin Simeon Wright challenged her story. According to Wright, he went inside the store hardly a minute after Emmett had entered and saw no inappropriate behavior. It was also alleged that the black boy whistled as he left the store though it is not known whether he whistled at the woman or at his playmates.

A few days later, on the early morning of August 28, 1955, the woman’s husband Roy Bryant, accompanied by his half-brother John William "J. W." Milam arrived at Mose Wright’s house and forcibly kidnapped Emmett Till and took him with them.

The brutal murder of Emmett Till continued to haunt American citizens for long, as evident by the number of books, documentaries and songs that either focus on the case or allude to it. Author William Faulkner wrote two essays on Till while James Baldwin loosely based his 1964 drama ‘Blues for Mister Charlie’ on the Till case. It is also believed that the character of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is based on Emmett Till.

The James McCosh Elementary School in Chicago, where Till once studied, was renamed the "Emmett Louis Till Math And Science Academy" in 2005.