Difficult History Trivia: The Murder of Emmett Till | 15 Questions

Answer: Polio

Emmett recovered completely from his childhood bout of polio, but it left him with a persistent stutter. His mother, Mamie, taught him to overcome this by taking a deep breath and whistling when he began to stutter in order to steady his breathing. Many believe that he may actually have been using this trick when he supposedly gave a "wolf whistle" to white store owner Carolyn Bryant.

Answer: False

Quite the contrary; Mamie, who had grown up in the Mississippi delta, was only too well aware of the terrible things that could happen to blacks who did not "keep their place", and of the reluctance of the authorities there to protect citizens of color.

She warned Emmett to "Be very careful how you speak...say 'yes sir' and 'no ma'am' and do not hesitate to humble yourself if you have to get down on your knees!" For Emmett, a brash city boy from the North with an outgoing disposition, this proved too tall an order to fill.

Answer: Kissed Carolyn

On their way to the store, Emmett is said to have bragged to his friends about his exploits with girls back in Chicago, at one point showing them a photograph of a white girl and stating that she was his girlfriend. There are varying accounts as to what happened at Bryant's Grocery; according to some versions, Emmett made crude remarks to Carolyn, other versions allege that he went so far as to put his arms around her waist, saying "I've got something for you, Baby!" What is certain is that Carolyn was sufficiently alarmed to bring up a pistol from the rear of the store. Upon leaving the store, Emmett turned to Carolyn and said "Bye, Baby!"; according to some accounts, he also whistled at her (others, however, insist that Emmett whistled outside the store while talking to friends, using the trick his mother taught him; still others have pointed out that a game of checkers was in progress outside the store, and that Emmett had whistled at a particularly good move). By this time, Emmett's friends had become frightened and hustled him quickly away from the store. Whatever the truth may be of what actually transpired at the store that day, one thing is certain: nothing that Emmett was described as having done or said could possibly justify what was done to him in retaliation.

Answer: False

After the incident, Carolyn discussed the incident with her sister-in-law and both agreed that it would be better not to mention anything to Roy upon his return, since a violent incident would undoubtedly ensue. As upset as she may have been by the incident, Carolyn appeared to be reluctant to get the young man who had flirted with her in any serious trouble.

However, word quickly spread about Emmett's brash and surprising behavior, particularly among the black community. Sadly, it was a member of Emmett's own race who informed Roy Bryant that a black youth had insulted his wife, no doubt the informer was resentful of Emmett's audacity.

When Roy questioned Carolyn about the incident, she admitted the truth. Roy then spoke with his half-brother, J.W. Miliam, who was a decorated WWII veteran; J.W. agreed with Roy that something should be done about the matter.

Answer: Moses Wright

At about 3:00 on the morning of the 28th, Miliam and Bryant banged loudly on the door of Wright's home. When Wright answered, the two men demanded to see "the boy from Chicago" who had "done that talk at Money". Wright noted that Miliam had a gun and a flashlight.

He went to fetch Emmett, who was asleep in a rear bedroom he was sharing with his cousin, Curtis. The two men ordered Emmett to get dressed and ordered his frightened grandmother, who rose to protect him, to return to bed. In desperation, Wright's wife Elizabeth offered to pay the men whatever she could if they would leave Emmett alone. One of the men promised to return Emmett if it turned out he wasn't the right boy, but Wright knew he wouldn't likely see Emmett alive again. At the trial the following month, Wright took the stand and described in detail the events of the morning when Emmett was kidnapped.

When the District Attorney Gerald Chatam asked him to identify the man with the gun, Wright stood with great dignity, pointed to Miliam, and stated "Thar he!" In a later interview, Wright stated "It was the first time in my life that I had the courage to accuse a white man of a crime. I wasn't exactly brave, and I wasn't scared. I just wanted to see justice done."

Answer: Gunshot to the head

In a chilling confession made the year after the trial, J.W. Miliam described the murder in sickening detail. The two men had pistol-whipped the youth, severely damaging his eyes and nose, knocking out some of his teeth, and fracturing his skull. They forced him to carry a heavy cotton gin fan, which they had retrieved from a trash heap, onto the Tallahatchie bridge and made him strip naked.

Despite this brutalization, Miliam said that Emmett never cried out or changed his defiant attitude, a fact which further inflamed the two men. Holding a gun to the boy's head, Miliam asked "You still think you're better than me?" Emmett replied "Yeah", upon which Miliam put a bullet into his head.

The two then tied the fan to the body with barbed wire and dumped the body in the river.

Answer: A ring

Emmett was wearing his father's ring, inscribed with the letters L.T. (Louis Till), which had been given to him by his mother after his father's death in 1945. Although Emmett had been forced to strip, he had not removed the ring.

Answer: Jet

Jet Magazine, which focuses on African-American life, history, news, and concerns, had published its first issue in 1951. It was the first magazine to publish unedited photos of the body, though other publications eventually followed suit (including the "Chicago Defender" in Emmett's own hometown).

These pictures put a human face on the horrors being suffered by people of color in the South and had a profound effect upon people of all races. Mamie Till had said of her decision to have an open casket "I want the world to see what they did to Emmett" and, indeed, the sight Till's mangled, swollen face shocked the nation and galvanized civil-rights leaders and the African-American community at large; the days of subservience and intimidation simply could not continue.

These anguished words of Mamie's also struck a chord with mothers everywhere: "Have you ever sent a loved son on vacation, and had him returned to you in a pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you this sickening sight is your son, lynched?"

Answer: True

At the time of Louis' death in 1945, Mamie had been informed that her husband had been executed in Italy for "willfull misconduct". No more detailed information had ever been provided to her. During the trial, Mississippi senator James O. Eastland, a staunch segregationalist, released the information that Emmett's father had been executed for raping two women in Italy and killing a third, this served to imply that Emmett's own behavior was of a piece with his father's. Mamie was shocked by this revelation; her husband's army records had never been released to her, and it seemed strange that a senator had been made privy to information about Louis Till that his own widow had not been allowed to see. Christopher Benson, the author of "Death of Innocence; the Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America", has researched the death of Louis Till and learned that, during the war, a disproportionate number of black soldiers were court-martialed and executed for such crimes, frequently without sufficient evidence.

This raises the disturbing possibility that Emmett's father, like Emmett himself, may have been the victim of a lynching.

Answer: They weren't convinced that Emmett's body had been found.

The jury had deliberated for just over one hour before delivering their verdict (one juror later admitted that ".. it probably would have been shorter, but we stopped to drink some pop.") During the trial, Tallahatchie sheriff H.C. Strider had testified that the body was so badly decomposed that he could not have identified it even had it been his own son.

This was the principal excuse offered for the acquittal, that it could not be determined with any certainty that the body had been found. No explanation was offered as to whose body they thought might have been found in the river, why Emmett hadn't been seen or heard from after the kidnapping, or how Emmett's father's ring had ended up on the "unidentified" body (Emmett's mother had, in fact, identified the body, in spite of its condition).

Many who had been pessimistic about the prospects of the jury convicting the men for murder had hoped that, at least, they would be convicted of kidnapping (of which they were, by their own admission, clearly guilty), but the jury declined even to do this. The verdict sparked outrage, not only throughout the U.S., but in parts of Europe as well; newspapers in France, Belgium, and Germany denounced the trial as a travesty of justice. Mamie Till, who had stayed away from court when the verdict was returned, described it as "unbelievable and fantastic", and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt remarked that "It might be a reminder to us as a nation that we stand as the symbol of democracy to the world and that equal justice is looked upon as the essential part of democracy."

Answer: About four months later

Since they could not be retried for the Till murder, Bryant and Miliam decided to accept an offer from Look magazine to publish their story in return for a fee of $4,000. Both men probably believed that they would be looked upon as heroes after the interview; in fact, the sickening details of their account, along with their warped sense of righteousness about what they had done, served to further inflame public indignation over the case and its verdict.

There were many even among Southern whites who found it difficult to square the concept of Southern "honor" with the brutal beating and murder of a defenseless fourteen-year-old, as described by Miliam.

The interview was published in January, 1956, and was titled "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi."

Answer: Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat on a bus.

In Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks historically refused to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white passenger, which was then a violation of state law. Her subsequent arrest prompted the Montgomery bus boycott which, in turn, led to the desegregation of the city bus system. For her brave act of defiance, Parks has become famous as "the mother of the civil rights movement". Parks has stated that the Emmett Till case was very much on her mind on that day (which was a little over three months after Emmett's murder); one newspaper quoted her as saying "I thought of Emmett Till, and when the bus driver ordered me to move to the back and I just couldn't move."

Answer: A play by Edward Albee

Edward Albee had written a play in 1960 entitled "The Death of Bessie Smith" about the tragic 1937 death of the legendary blues singer following an automobile accident in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Albee's play deals with the story (now largely discredited) that Smith was denied admittance to a whites-only hospital following the accident, and that this delay caused her death. Albee did not write a play about the Till case.

Singer-composer Bob Dylan memorialized the Emmett Till tragedy in his 1962 ballad "The Death of Emmett Till". Dylan effectively captured the public outrage over the case in the song's penultimate verse: "If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust, your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust. Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow, for you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!" Author-playwright Toni Morrison had included the story of Emmett Till in her 1977 novel "Song of Solomon"; the Till case was also the subject of her first play "Dreaming Emmett", which premiered in 1986 (James Baldwin's play "Blues for Mister Charlie" was also loosely based on the Till case). In recent years, a poem by Langston Hughes was discovered entitled "Mississippi-1955 (subtitled "To the memory of Emmett Till lynched in Mississippi, USA/August 1955").

Answer: Blacks refused to work for Miliam or patronize Bryant's store.

Ironically, Bryant and Miliam found that their livelihoods were dependent on the very people to whom they had believed themselves so innately superior. Most of the customers who had patronized Bryant's store prior to the murder had been black; after his release and the publication of the interview, the store was shunned by these former patrons. Eventually, he and his wife were forced to close the store. Miliam, likewise, was unable to find any person of color willing to work on his farm, which ultimately failed. Even many local whites, although they had supported Bryant and Miliam during the trial, were reluctant to associate with them afterwards. Both men eventually left Money and moved to Texas, but were never able to achieve any degree of success.

The Bryants eventually divorced in 1979; by 1990, both men had died, Bryant in 1990, after a strange and bitter interview in which he complained that he had "never made a nickel" out of the Till case (apparently, he forgot the $4,000 he and Miliam had made from the Look magazine interview). Miliam had died of cancer the previous year.

Answer: No

Sadly, Mamie Till died of heart failure in the first week of January 2003 only two weeks before the documentary aired. In her interview, she wrenchingly describes the day she learned of Emmett's fate: "My eyes were so full of tears, I couldn't see, and when I made the announcement that Emmett was found and how he was found, the whole house began to scream and cry. That's when I realized this was a load I would have to carry."