Ghosts of Mississippi
The FBI is exhuming Emmett Till’s body as part of a reopened 50-year-old murder case, evidently to prove both that the body is really his and to establish how he died. From the Clarion-Ledger:
An all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam in the Aug. 28, 1955, killing of Till, and the jury foreman said afterward that jurors believed the state failed to prove it was Till’s body. Defense attorneys suggested to jurors a sinister group had planted the body, and the sheriff said publicly Till was still alive.
Several months later, Bryant and Milam confessed to Look magazine they had beaten and shot Till because the 14-year-old had wolf-whistled at Bryant’s wife, Carolyn, at the family's grocery store.
When Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River, it was unrecognizable. His mother, Mamie Till Mobley, identified her son by a ring on his finger. Authorities had wanted to bury his body, but they were stopped from doing so. Instead, his body was returned to Chicago, where his mother insisted on a public viewing and funeral so the world could see what was done to her son.
Photographs of Till’s brutalized body were seen around the world and galvanized the civil rights movement.
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