How Emmett Till’s Case Haunts Us

Rev. Wheeler Parker remembers all of the dates associated with Emmett Till: He and Emmett left Chicago for Money, Mississippi, on Aug. 20, 1955. They went to Bryant's Grocery Store on Aug. 24 to buy snacks. There, Emmett whistled at Carolyn Bryant. Some say he whistled as a joke; others say his mother taught him to whistle to overcome stuttering. J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant abducted Emmett on Aug. 28. Emmett's body was recovered on Aug. 31. Milam and Bryant had tortured and shot him in the head, wrapped a cotton gin fan around his neck, and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Rev. Parker was Emmett's best friend and cousin. He was with Emmett at the store the day Carolyn Bryant said Emmett whistled at her. He was in the house when Emmett was taken away by Milam and Bryant. Rev. Parker spoke with me about Emmett Till at Northwest African American Museum (NAAM) as part of a series of events around the exhibit "Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley: Let the World See" (there through Dec. 31).

Emmett Till's murder brought nationwide attention to anti-Black violence in this country. Some say it was the catalyst for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

Till lived in Chicago. Rev. Parker, who moved to Chicago from Mississippi, told him about the South and invited him to visit. Emmett's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, did not want Emmett to go; she told him about life in Mississippi for Black people and how different the South was from Chicago, but after much pleading on Emmett's part, his mother permitted him to go. Emmett wrote he was having a "fine" time in a letter to his mom. It was only a few days later that the incident at Bryant's store occurred. Carolyn told her husband the boy from out of town wolf whistled at her. Roy Bryant and his brother J. W. Milam went to Emmett's cousins' house and took Emmett away. When the body was found days later, the sheriff in Mississippi ordered the battered boy's body to be buried immediately. Mamie Till-Mobley demanded her son's body be sent back to Chicago. She held a well-publicized, open-casket funeral attended by over 50,000 people and had the boy's mutilated and decomposing figure photographed and published in Jet magazine, saying, "Let the people see what they did to my boy." In September, weeks after the murder, a jury acquitted Bryant and Milam after 67 minutes. Four months later, the men admitted to Look magazine that they had killed Emmett. Constitutional law says a person can't be tried twice for the same offense. No one was ever punished for the murder.

I remember most every date associated with Emmett Till. I grew up in Louisiana. I was in grade school when Jet magazine published a picture of Till before he went to Mississippi and the other of his mutilated corpse. 

"There was a whole different way of life and attitude that's not really explained or talked about, because who's gonna write it?" said Rev. Parker. "I talk to Black people who say, 'I get mad when I think or talk about it,' so they don't talk about it. It's a whole 'nother life that we don't talk about because it was so terrible.

Rev. Parker knows other Black bodies were in the Tallahatchie River. "The moment he was taken, we start[ed] looking by the river for him, because they put a lot of us in the rivers," Rev. Parker said. "Every family has a story to tell."

I grew up being told Louisiana's Red River is red with the blood of Black bodies. My paternal grandfather was killed by two white men.

"If you didn't experience it, you have no idea what it was like. It's a whole 'nother life that we don't talk about because it was so terrible," Rev Parker said. "[This case] makes America look bad. So they justify it. 'He did something.' I experienced them saying 'He got what he deserved' for 30 years."

Rev. Parker was not interviewed for three decades after the murder of Emmett Till, though he was a witness. In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, he described why: "I didn't have access to media to tell my story. When I got a chance to tell it … I told it. The media was not interested in coming to us until after [a] 1985 documentary by NBC." Rev. Parker wrote A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey for My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till with Chris Benson in 2023 with his own detailed account.

Till has haunted us for generations. Over the decades, Till's body was exhumed for further investigation, and the case was reopened twice and filed to be reopened a third time. Then, in 2023, as I was leisurely reading The Seattle Times, I turned the page to see a headline: "White woman whose claim caused Emmett Till murder has died."

Surely, some people thought this was the end of Till. However, the impact of this murder seems everlasting. In 2005 I sat across from his preserved casket in a chapel space at a museum in Washington, D.C. Most people walk past the casket. But visitors can sit on a pew in front of it. A huge photograph of mourners in the church during the service is on the walls. I sat about 10 minutes convincing myself that maybe I would no longer think about Emmett Till.

I was wrong. When another Black person is killed senselessly, brutally, unlawfully, especially by a law enforcement individual, I think of Emmett Till. Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Manuel Ellis. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Charleena Lyles. Eric Garner. Jordan Neely. The list continues. Do you know anyone? Anyone other than George Floyd? So many people murdered, locally and throughout the world. We witness the evil, and attempt to get justice.

At another museum in Alabama, almost 300 jars of soil are displayed. The soil is taken from lynching sites throughout the U.S. Each jar bears the name of the person lynched and the state where the lynching took place. More than 4,000 African Americans were recorded as lynched between 1877 and 1950, but no one will ever know how many people were murdered because of the color of their skin.

Rev. Parker attended the antilynching bill signing with President Joe Biden and Ida B. Wells' great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster. He described what Duster said: "My great-grandmother was here 100 years ago. Took 100 years, 200 tries to write an antilynching bill." Rev. Parker continued, "God gave me some understanding. Wheels of justice in America grind, but they grind slow[ly]."

Because he is a minister and pastor, I asked Rev. Parker how he reconciled the horrendous murder of Till with the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God. Without a pause, he replied, "I was always taught to love and forgive." The simple answer came so easily, almost as if anybody taught to love and forgive would conclude similarly.

Why is the murder of Till significant after so many decades? Why must we be aware of it? This murder opened the eyes of many Americans unfamiliar with such atrocities. Much of the divisiveness in the country stems from so many people who have or haven't been able to share the trauma resulting from racial prejudice. The anger and frustration of some Black people are often greeted with confusion and disgust by those ignorant of such atrocities. Worse, some dismiss Till's case with "That happened such a long time ago!" The more of us who know our history, the more we can understand how that history has influenced us and continues to influence us. Some of us can get to the point of understanding if we have the information.

The outstanding exhibit on Emmett Till and his mother Mamie-Till Mobley ends Dec. 31 at Northwest African American Museum. We can follow Emmett's timeline from Chicago to Money, Mississippi, and back to Chicago and learn about the aftermath of his death. We can resolve to erase hate and discrimination. This means all lies, little white ones or big black ones, and all the colors between.

More people than ever have the opportunity to learn about the horror of the murder and why it haunts some of us. The murder of Emmett Till must be remembered as a significant point in American history — not Black history, but American history. This case has left a mark on too many Americans, many of whom are alive today. The trauma has been and will be inherited. The more people who understand and recognize the trauma, the closer we come to closing the chasm in our country.

Recognizing the traumatic mark Emmett Till's murder leaves in the minds of so many is a giant step to recognizing the traumas other people in our communities and country have suffered. The people who deplore "identity politics" never needed an identity here or soon lost it. For those of us who have always been designated Native, Mexican, Black, Chinese, gay, or any of the many groups labeled "other," ignorance of our traumatic history leaves yet another mark. To be Americans in the country of the free and brave, the country where everyone has equal opportunity, the country where everyone can enjoy "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the country that makes so many people from so many places wish to make home — we must be a country that recognizes each of us as the individuals we are.

Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley: Let the World See

Now through Dec. 31, 2024

Northwest African American Museum

2300 S Massachusetts St., Seattle, WA 98144

(206) 518-6000

Thursday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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