On this day, Aug. 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped and brutally murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi.
The Black teenager was accused by Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working at a store, of whistling at her. Days later, Bryant’s husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, dragged Till from his uncle’s home at gunpoint.
They mutilated him, tied a 75-pound cotton gin fan around his neck with barbed wire and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River.
An all-white jury acquitted them, but months later the men admitted the killing in an interview with Look magazine.
The case became a catalyst for the civil rights movement in America.
Carolyn Bryant Donham died in 2023 at the age of 88.
Click play to listen to the AURN News report from Clay Cane. Follow @claycane & @aurnonline for more.
