That big .45 jumped in Big Milam's hand. The youth turned to catch that big, expanding bullet at his right ear. He dropped. In
Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant abducted 14-year-old
Emmet "Bobo" Till, tortured him, shot him in the head, and dumped his body in the river for
whistling at a white woman. Emmett's mother insisted on an open-casket funeral so people could see what had happened to her son. On September 15, 1955,
Jet magazine published
photos [NSFW] of Emmett's corpse, which brought the case national attention and
helped ignite the
civil rights movement. On September 23, 1955, an all-white jury
acquitted Bryant and Milam after deliberating for about an hour. Milam and Bryant confessed in a January 24 , 1966,
Look magazine article. Milam died in 1980 and Bryant died in 1990. After
reopening the case in 2004 based on
new evidence that more people may have been involved, the Justice Department
closed the case today without filing any new charges.
[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha
on Mar 17, 2006 -
19 comments
