What happened to Emmett Till?
What happened to Emmett Till was tragic. His right eye was missing, his nose was broken, and there was a hole in the side of his head. As you can see on the picture on the left, his face was extremely mutilated. Till's body was then sent to his mother, Mamie Till in Chicago. She decided to have an open casket funeral so people could see what had happened to her son. About 50,000 people attended the funeral. This was one thing that shook people up. The fact that Mamie Till stepped up and showed everyone what had happened to her son was very brave. A lot of African American families went missing, but no one said anything because they knew they would go missing too.
Not everyone believed that the body that was found was Till's. According to Milam and Bryant, the body was not Till's. They supposedly let Till go and said that the NAACP and Mamie Till had dug up a body and claimed it was Till's.
Trial for Milam and Bryant began September 19, 1955 in Sumner, Mississippi. It was hard for Mamie's team because in the South it was dangerous for African Americans to testify against white, so finding witnesses was hard. however, they managed to find a few.
Below we have the Prosecution team and the Defense team.
Prosecution Witnesses:
Mary Amanda Bradley, Mamie Till Bradley, John Ed Cothran,
Robert Hodges, Chester Miller, Benjamin L. Mims, Charles Nelson,
Add Reed, Willie Reed, George Smith,
C. A. Strickland, Moses Wright
Defense Witnesses:
Lee Russell Allison, L. W. Boyce, Carolyn Bryant,
Grover Duke, Pete McGaa, Harry D. Malone,
Juanita Milam, Luther B. Otkens, Harold Perry,
James Sanders, Franklin Smith, Henry Clarence Strider