U.S. to Reopen Probe of Till Slaying
2004-05-11
Associated Press/AP Online
CHICAGO - Though Mamie Till Mobley never lived to see it, the pressure she exerted over four decades to have her son's 1955 murder reopened has finally borne fruit: The Justice Department is now looking into the case.
R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division said Monday officials will reopen the Emmett Till's race-motivated murder following a long campaign by the NAACP, members of Congress and Mobley, who died in Chicago last year at age 81.
"I can see her sitting in the chair with a tissue, and her cheeks rosy red and her eyes full of tears. It would be a happy, relief, burden-lifted type of cry," said Airickca Gordon, 34, a cousin whom Mobley helped raise.
After Till's murder, his mother insisted upon a public viewing and funeral in Chicago for her only child. Pictures of the battered body shocked the world, and the case became an early spark for the civil rights movement.
Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago, was killed during a trip to see relatives in Mississippi, apparently because he whistled at a white woman. The boy's mutilated body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River.
Two people were charged in the case - Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman Till purportedly whistled at, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half brother - were acquitted by a jury that deliberated for 67 minutes.
The two later admitted to the killing in a magazine interview. The Justice Department never investigated the case despite appeals from Till's mother and others. Both Bryant and Milam have since died.
The Justice Department said it will partner with local law enforcement officials to investigate whether any prosecutions remain possible under state law. The five-year statute of limitations in effect in 1955 means no federal charges can be brought against any potential accomplices.
"This brutal murder and grotesque miscarriage of justice outraged a nation and helped galvanize support for the modern American civil rights movement," Acosta said. "We owe it to Emmett Till, and we owe it to ourselves, to see whether after all these years, some additional measure of justice remains possible."
A few days after allegedly whistling at Carolyn Bryant at her family's store, Till was abducted from his uncle's home in the small town of Money, Miss., on Aug. 28, 1955.
"There are lots of loose things out there that have never been answered," said Wheeler Parker, 65, a cousin who was in the house with Till the night he was abducted.
The Till case gave many Americans a closer look at the segregated South, its Jim Crow laws and lynchings. The slaying occurred a little over a year after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed state-sponsored school segregation and about 100 days before seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.
"Emmett Till's death changed the hearts and minds of millions," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "It was the wake-up call."
In 1956, Look magazine published an account of the slaying in which Milam admitted he and Bryant were guilty. Double jeopardy prevented the pair from being tried again.
In the article, Milam recounted the incident that led to Till's murder.
"'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of them sending your kind down here to stir up trouble,'" Milam was quoted as saying. "I'm going to make an example of you, just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand."
Milam said he beat Till and shot him in the head, then used barbed wire to tie a heavy metal fan around Till's neck and dumped the body in the river. No other accomplices were mentioned.
Stanley Nelson, producer and director of the PBS documentary, "The Murder of Emmett Till," said in a telephone interview Monday that several witnesses with whom he spoke indicated others were involved. Most of those witnesses, Nelson said, were not contacted by authorities at the time.
Another documentary filmmaker, Keith A. Beauchamp, found evidence after examining the case for nine years for "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till." He believes as many as seven additional people may have been involved, many of them still alive.
After her son's death, Mobley became a teacher and civil rights activist, always eager to speak about her son at schools, conferences and to strangers who recognized her.
"I wish Mamie could have been here," another of her cousins, Abriel Thomas, said Monday. "It was the only thing she ever wanted out of life - a little bit of justice."
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Associated Press Writer Curt Anderson in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.
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