Emmett Till Trial: The Plessy V. Ferguson Case

His mother gave him a ring that was his fathers , with his father's initials “L.V” engraved. Tills mother gave him a kiss and told him goodbye. That was the last time she ever seen her son. Arriving in Mississippi on August 24, 1955 a group of teenagers including Emmett went to the grocery store to buy snacks after a long day of picking cotton. Emmett bought some bubblegum , and later some kids reported that he flirted and whistled at the clerk Carolyn Bryant.

He had recovered, but stuttered. Emmett was murdered because he was whistling at a white woman and was taken by her husband and his half brother. He was killed August 28, 1955 (source 2). When Emmett flirted with the woman on August 24, he was kidnapped by Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W Milam. Emmett’s mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River and his kidnappers were found non-guilty.

Emmett went in, bought some candy, and on the way out was heard saying, “Bye, baby” to the woman. There were no witnesses in the store, but Carolyn Bryant, the women behind the counter claimed that Emmett had grabbed her, and

Later that night, Roy Bryant and his brother in law went to his uncle's house unannounced, to have a “talk” with Emmett. But, they had kidnapped him and took him to the Milam’s residence and beat him. Then, they went down to Tallahatchie River where they threw his deformed body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire. His body stayed at the bottom of the river for three days, until it was found. According to “ Emmett Till Biography” from biography.com, “ They then beat the teenager brutally, dragged him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and shoved his mutilated body into the water.

On August 24th, 1955, Emmett Till came from Chicago, to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi. He and a group of teenagers went to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Till was allegedly accused of flirting and whistling at Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the owner of the store. “Four days later, at approximately 2:30 a.m. on August

This proves that after Emmett was mistreated, Hiram started to feel as if the people he knew well are now people he knows nothing about. Hiram acknowledges how people act when something bad happens to a black person. Furthermore, he really thought that R.C. was his friend but now he knows how they act when it comes to people they don’t like. As Hiram goes on to live his life, he thinks that even if it’s the wrong place and wrong time, a good person would not go along with anything awful.

The Tragic Life of Emmett Till Emmett Till’s deformed body lead to a new idea. The new idea was like a spark to tinder. In 1955 in Leslie Millhams barn Emmett Till was dragged from a ford truck and the next thing a whip sound pierces the starry night. And a strangled cry from Till rings out from the barn. The men drag Till back to the truck and throws him into the bed of the truck and blood starts to trickle out of the bed of the truck.

Emmett Till, a young black boy of Mississippi, was murdered by Roy Bryant and John W. Milam in August of 1955. The notorious case drew in a crowd of more than a thousand people, all attentive to the decision on whether or not to indict the accused men. However, by the ruling of an all-white-man jury, Bryant and Milam were acquitted on all charges. This decision sparked a national outcry from the African American population, and ultimately fueled the flames to Black Civil Rights in the South. Despite racial barriers established in America, Bryant, Milam, and the town of Sumner, Mississippi recognized the extinguished life of a human being, not just a negro boy, evidenced through the website famous murder trials by Douglas O. Linder.

Emmett Till was visiting his cousins in Money, Mississippi for a few weeks that summer. When he went into a grocery store to buy some bubblegum on August 24, proceeded to do something that got him killed. It is alleged that Emmett Till whistled/cat-called one of the female members of the white family who owned the store, Carolyn Bryant. This led to his capture 4 days later by Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam. They captured Till and tortured him until they eventually shot him in the head and dumped his 14 year old body in the Tallahatchie River, they found him in the water three days later.

When Emmett was just leaving the store he whistled at the woman behind the counter. Immediately after, he and his cousins all ran away knowing that they had messed up. Later in the night, after the incident with Emmett Till, Bryant's husband, Roy, heard about what had happened to his wife at their store and he was enraged and furious. So he, irrational and impulsive, decided to take his half-brother, J.W. Milam, and kidnap Emmett from his uncle’s home. They then brutally beat Till and took him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River.

“By the 1950s, the laws that prohibited African Americans from using white streetcars, restrooms, schools, parks,restaurants, and water fountains were called Jim Crow Laws” (“Kallen”). Jim Crow laws were basically segregation laws towards blacks. Blacks were also segregated on certain parts of the bus as you may know the story of Rosa Parks. “The Ku Klux Klan was formed after the Civil War to keep blacks from benefiting from the abolition of slavery” (“Kallen”). Emmett was more than likely unaware of how to treat whites in the south.

“Emmett Till and I were about the same age. A week after he was murdered . . . I stood on the corner with a gang of boys, looking at pictures of him in the black newspapers and magazines. In one, he was laughing and happy. In the other, his head was swollen and bashed in, his eyes bulging out of their sockets and his mouth twisted and broken.

As a class requirement, we were obligated to watch a documentary about Emmett Till. The documentary, titled “The Murder of Emmett Till” was a tell-all about a tragic story of a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago. Emmett Till was sent to Money, Mississippi to spend the summer with some relatives. In the 1950s, life in Chicago was different than life in Mississippi. Racism was stronger in the south than in the north and Emmett Till was walking into an environment he had never encountered before.

Upon arrival Emmett began to brag about how he had a Caucasian girlfriend back in Chicago. Knowing this was forbidden Emmett’s cousin listened in

219-220). Another theory was that he was flirting with the married woman, and someone told the husband and he ended up killing the young boy. Emmett Till’s death was a huge turning point in her life and she wanted to do something to change what was going on around her. It opened up her eyes and she realized that there was something else she had to be afraid of along with all of the many other things that children are already afraid of. The passage that I am looking at has to deal with the fears that the author discusses she has- “fear of hunger,