Murder of Emmett Till Reopened Nearly 63 Years Later

When I was first introduced to the case of Emmett Till, I was teaching an English class at an adult learning centre.

As part of an introductory activity leading into the study of To Kill A Mockingbird, students were to prepare a presentation about any historical situation, either past or present, that discussed notions of racism. A student called me over to ask me what I thought about what she'd put together on her presentation so far.

It contained some of the most harrowing images I'd ever seen, and I was impressed with the development of her presentation and what information she was putting into it. The presentation meant something to her; she was digging as hard as she could to get great detail about what happened and what, ultimately, the case of Emmett Till came to mean to the modern day civil rights movement. I remember the tears in her eyes as she would continue to learn new details and information. The Emmett Till case was one that meant something to her, and she was determined to show others they should care about it, too.

For those unfamiliar with the Emmett Till case and how a mere 14-year-old could be brutally beaten and tossed in a river as though he was nothing more than trash, history reports that young Till, an African American, somehow offended a young White woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, in her family's grocery store. This was in Money, Mississippi, and Till, a Chicagoan, was visiting relatives.

Some reports claim that Till whistled at her, which would have been politely called hugely controversial in the still-segregated South. According to History.com, the White woman's husband and her brother grabbed Till, made him carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, and then forced him to get naked. Then, they beat him, gouged his eye out, shot him in the head, and tossed him in the river, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire. It is a case frequently cited when looking at the history of the civil rights movement, in no small part due to its brutality and how Till's mother, Mamie, allowed for an open casket funeral in order to highlight the absolute horror of the racial violence.

Now, the case has been reopened due to something The New York Times is reporting as "new information." Of course, at this point, this could mean just about anything. It has, after all, been 63 years that this boy and his family has sought justice. Part of the issue has been that Ms. Donham's account of what happened has shifted several times over the years.

Now, though, with this new information comes the potential that the Till family could finally have the justice for Emmett Till that they have long since sought. Reportedly, while doing research for a new book, The Blood Of Emmett Till, Dr. Timothy B. Tyson managed to secure an interview with Ms. Donham, and during the interview, she recanted her story about Till's reportedly flirtatious behavior.

Dr. Tyson has suggested that perhaps the reopening of the case has much to do with a desire by the Trump administration to distract from the controversies that currently embroil it. There are other issues, however; racially motivated attacks that occurred prior to 1968 can't be prosecuted under a federal hate crime law, and that is perhaps one of the biggest problems in any sort of current pursuit of justice for Emmett Till at this point.

Whether the reopening of the Emmett Till murder will lead to any sort of prosecution and charges against the perpetrator—and attempts have been made to successfully indict Carolyn Bryant Donham for the manslaughter of Emmett Till, for instance—remains to be seen, but perhaps one of the biggest gains from any successful pursuit of justice in the Till case will be peace for Till and his family.