Body to Be Exhumed in 1955 Racial Killing (Emmett Till)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=1&u=/ap/20050504/ap_on_re_us/civil_rights_killing

Nearly 50 years after 14-year-old Emmett Till's murder shocked a nation and galvanized the civil rights movement, his body will be exhumed as federal authorities attempt to determine who killed him, the FBI said Wednesday.

Till's body, buried in a cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Alsip, will be exhumed within the next few weeks so the Cook County Medical Examiner's office can conduct an autopsy, said Deborah Madden, spokeswoman for the FBI's office in Jackson, Miss.

The black youth, who was raised in Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in the tiny Mississippi Delta community of Money on Aug. 28, 1955, reportedly for whistling at a white woman at a grocery store. His mutilated body was found in a river three days later.

The U.S. Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the Till investigation, saying it was triggered by several pieces of information including a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp. "The exhumation is a logical continuation of that," Madden said. "An autopsy was never performed on the body and the cause of death was never determined."

are caught. His poor family has waited a half a century for the truth.

New Evidence: Will There Finally Be Justice for Emmitt Till??
by lorraine


Wed May 4th, 2005 at 09:33:02 PDT

This is what American terrorism looks like: The mangled face of a young African-American boy

The images of Emmitt Till have haunted me for years. For those of you who don' t know the story, this from today's Chicago Sun-Times.

The story began innocently enough: In 1955, Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to spend the summer with relatives. His mother, Mamie Till Mobley, was reportedly apprehensive about letting her outgoing son spend the summer in Jim Crow Mississippi. Her worst fears were confirmed.
In August of 1955, while at a convenience store in Money, Miss., Till apparently whistled at and "sassed" a young white woman behind the counter. Three days later, Till was abducted at gunpoint from his great-uncle's home and savagely beaten, shot dead and dumped in the Tallahatchie River. Till's decaying body, attached to a 70-pound cotton gin fan fastened to his neck with barbed wire, was found three days after his abduction.

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Acquitted men later bragged
Two white men, one of whom was the husband of the woman behind the counter, were acquitted of the murder by an all-white jury despite their admission they were the ones who abducted Till. The defendants later bragged about the murder in a Look magazine article, which included gruesome details about Till's slaughter.
Today, 50 years later, I still want justice for a young man who dared to whistle at a white woman. At a young man from the north who couldn't understand why his cousins were so terrified of white people. For a mother who insisted that Emmitt's coffin be open, so that the world could see what had been done to her son.

Today, the FBI announced that it would exhume Emmitt's body to gather more evidence. Perhaps someone will be charged with the crime. May this latest chapter bring some peace to those of us who still hope for justice for Emmitt.

The Death of Emmitt Till by Bob Dylan

"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.

And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.

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!

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/4/12333/54760

heres (always) to truth justice and equality

the disgusting filth that killed Emmitt Till can be tried again (if they are even still alive) but perhaps his family can have some closure on this. Maybe they can even recover some damages. Hope so.

We know who the two men that committed the actual kidnapping and murder were because we have their written confessions and the testimony of Till's great uncle, and both of those men are now dead.

Putting some 80 year old guy on trial because he might have been peripherally involved in the murder, when neither the witnesses or the confession implicated anybody else, is a PR move and will undoubtably end up in an acquittal. It's unfortunate, but sometimes the bad guys do get away.

in the case, the woman whistled at, is still alive. It has been reported that it was she who pointed out Till to the murderers. She was seen in the car with the men who came to Till's relatives' home. There are rumors that others were also involved.

n/t

Every single account that I've seen claims that the wife didn't take this to her husband until confronted. Her husband didn't find out until one of the OTHER witnesses told him. I've never read any testimony which claimed her to be present at either the kidnapping or murder scenes.

In fact, the only thing I've read indicating additional accomplices comes from the testimony of one of the witnesses, and that witness claimed that the other people in the pickup were black. If there were actually other blacks helping in the kidnap/murder plot, they were either acting under duress OR their presence indicates that the murder may not have been racially motivated after all. Since there's a lot of reason to doubt both of those possibilities, I tend to discount the claim that they were there at all.

BTW, theres some great information on the case here:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/emmett_till/index.html?sect=22

http://hnn.us/articles/4853.html

You are right. The exhumation is for "historical purposes" Someone will make a few dollars over the documentary rights.

It was clear he was beaten to death/to a pulp like 10 times over. But for some reason I don't think they will be able to find anything pointing to the people who did it. As long as they are this far in the investigation, they may as well complete it. Makes me wonder what took them so long (Why does the filmmaker trigger more investigation/info??? What was Justice doing over the years)

ok, i've been driven over the edge of conspiracy. I don't think our govt. farts without a dirty under handed reason. So are they trying to bring the black support back in? Appease the million whatever marchers? Jeb seems to have taken a personal interest in this so there must be something for them to gain from it. Perhaps, whoever was implicated is from a big democratic family? Perhaps they are still alive and politically active?

I just know one thing for sure...

we're gonna need to "spunge" his mouth for sure.

"The Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the Till investigation, citing several pieces of information that included a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp."

....

"The documentary credited with helping open a federal investigation into the 1955 civil rights murder of Emmett Till will be shown today in Kansas City.

“The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till”"
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/10131765.htm


Way to go Keith. You're a New Yorker now, but you're doing good by your people in Louisiana, too.

to him.

a hell because the ones who did this deserve to be eternally damned to hellfire.

they have exhumed Emmet Till's body? I could swear it is.

But it's not. It happened and still happens and if those who were fighting for civil rights didn't keep pursuing it, it would have just faded away just like all the other cases.

I don't see the point. The 2 men who committed the crime got away with it. There's no taking that back.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/index.html

There was one young witness who had left town before the trial, according to the guy who identified the murderers, I think he had admitted to cleaning out the bed of the truck and was afraid for his life, so he disappeared. Everyone in that town was afraid to condemn or blame any whites and sitting on that witness seat was the same as an invitation to join Emmett.

Half of Chicago lined up to view what had been done to Emmett Till. Woke up a lot of folks!