The woman who falsely accused Emmett Till dies in Mississippi!

 

Carolyn Bryant & Emmett Till

They say it's wrong to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Corolyn Bryant, of Mississippi, who died last week aged 88, I will make an exception. Good Riddance!

Emmett Till, was 14 years old in August 1955, when Bryant’s husband and another white friend abducted, tortured, and lynched him, in Money, Mississippi, because she claimed that he had whistled and grabbed her while she was working in the store that they owned. An all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, for the murder of Emmett Till in September 1955. Both men later admitted to the killing in a paid interview in Look magazine, but never faced a retrial. Carolyn Bryant, admitted that her husband had brought Till to their house before killing him. Although Bryant is known to have lied about the incident, she never showed any remorse for the death of Emmett Till, who was from Chicago.

In August 1955, Emmett's mother, Mamie Bradley, had put her son on a train in Chicago so he could visit his cousins and great-uncle Moses Wright, in Money, Mississippi. Before his departure, Mamie had warned Emmett, to be "careful around white people." Being from Chicago, Emmett, knew nothing about the lynching’s and racism that were a feature of life in the rural South. He spent his days helping to pick cotton and swimming in the local river. Several days after his arrival, Emmett and his cousins drove to Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market, to buy snacks and candy.

One of the last living person's to have witnessed both the incident at the store and Emmett's abduction, was Emmett's cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. Parker says that nothing happened in the store, but he had concerns about Emmett's liking for practical jokes and whether he was using appropriate language for a black person in the rural South - "Yes, sir. No, sir." In his book, Parker recalled, "Emmett liked to make people laugh, and so he whistled", while Carolyn Bryant, then aged 21, was stood outside the door of the store. He said they were all stunned and added, "We could have died. If there was any way possible, we would have disappeared. We knew that he had violated Southern mores. That was not good at all. So we all made a beeline for the car."

What Bryant claimed to have taken place went much further. She said that Emmett had grabbed her hand and wrist, and had asked her out for a date. Several days later, Bryant and Milam drove to the house of Moses Wright in a Chevrolet pickup and dragged Emmett Till from his bed, and abducted him. Some witnesses believe Carolyn Bryant was also in the pickup. That was the last time that Parker ever saw his cousin Emmett Till alive. Emmett's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River three days later on 31st August. He had been tortured and shot and beaten beyond recognition. His teeth were missing and an ear had been cut off. An eye was also hanging out of its socket. Emmett was found with a cotton-gin fan attached to his neck with barbed wire. A film about the death of Emmett Till recently went on release in British cinemas and he was immortalised in song by Bob Dylan, in his ballad, 'The Death of Emmett Till'.