Pivotal Killing in Civil Rights Era Revisited

ALSIP, Ill. —  The body of the 14-year-old boy whose murder in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement rests in an African American cemetery here, adjacent to a used car lot and across from the Swap-o-Rama flea market. Emmett Louis Till lay undisturbed while the tragedy of his death and the acquittal of two white men, who later admitted killing him, galvanized an army of Americans to call for racial justice.

Now, federal officials plan to exhume Till’s body in an attempt to learn who dragged him from the house where he was staying in the Delta community of Money, Miss., on Aug. 28, 1955.

His murder is one of several prominent civil rights cases that have been reopened in recent years as the FBI seeks to wrap up unsolved crimes from an era of social tumult. Because a five-year statute of limitations was in effect at the time of Till’s murder, no federal charges could be brought. But Mississippi charges still could apply.

At a Justice Department briefing this week, R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said renewed interest in the case had led to information that Till’s known killers might not have acted alone. “If indeed others are implicated and they can be identified,” Acosta said, “they can still be prosecuted.”

Eric Holland, a Justice Department spokesman, said Wednesday that the investigation would be conducted jointly by the FBI, the district attorney in Greenville, Miss., and the Justice Department’s civil rights division. No federal agencies were involved in the inquiry 50 years ago.

“Previous investigations did not perform an autopsy,” Holland said. “Consequently, no scientifically conclusive cause of death was ever established. Family members ... have been informed that an exhumation and forensic examination of Emmett Till’s remains will be conducted in the near future, and agree that the exhumation is necessary.”

Till, who reportedly had whistled at a white woman in a grocery store, was beaten so severely that one of his eyes detached from his head. One ear was missing. Other parts of his body were cut and mutilated. The teenager had either been shot in the head, hit or been brutalized with a drill. A fisherman found his body in the Tallahatchie River, a 75-pound fan from a cotton gin tied to his neck with barbed wire.

His body was returned to his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, wrapped in filthy paper and stuffed in a wooden box.

The efforts of Mother Mobley, as she became known, to demand justice for her son’s murder inspired legions of civil rights pioneers. Rosa Parks later told Mother Mobley that she was thinking of Emmett when she refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala., in December 1955 -- three months after Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were found not guilty of the murder.

Their trial, by many accounts, was held for show. The jury had deliberated 67 minutes. One juror said afterward that the decision would have come sooner if the panel had not taken a soda-pop break.

Bryant was married to the woman Till reportedly whistled at. Milam was Bryant’s half-brother. In a story they sold to Look magazine that appeared in January 1956, the two men said that they had killed Till. Bryant and Milam are dead.

“The atrocities that had been committed under Jim Crow [laws] were swept under the rug until Mother Mobley exposed Emmett’s murder,” said Christopher Benson, coauthor of a book called “Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America.”

“So many people were moved by her courage to share her grief with the world,” Benson said. “They were moved not only emotionally, but they were moved to action. It fueled the movement forward.”

Mother Mobley insisted that her son’s casket be left open so the 100,000 people who filed past it could see the damage to his body. She died in 2003, and is buried beside her son at Chicago Burr Oak Cemetery -- the area’s first African American burial ground -- in this industrial city 20 miles southwest of Chicago.

“This is one of the most heinous cases that ever happened in the Deep South,” said state Sen. David Jordan, who represents Greenwood, Miss., where Bryant and Milam were tried.

Jordan, who is black, was 19 when he attended the trial; he said it was the first time he had seen black people rising in court to accuse white people of anything. “Those of us who attended the trial saw the mockery of justice, and that created in us the courage to fight,” he said.

The sense of injustice lingered long after Till’s death, prompting demands that the case be reopened, Jordan said. Last year, the Justice Department announced plans to investigate Till’s murder.

New information had been uncovered, the FBI said, including material contained in a documentary: “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till.”

Filmmaker Keith Beauchamp said in an interview Wednesday that he had been working with the FBI on its investigation. He said he had identified “up to 14 people involved in the kidnapping and murder” -- five of whom were still alive.

Beauchamp, 33, said Till’s mother had shown him a death certificate that said Till was killed either by a gunshot or an ax. An exhumation, he said, could determine the actual cause of death.

“I really feel that they [the FBI] know there is something to be found,” he said. “I am confident that justice will be served.”

After meeting with Beauchamp while he was researching his film, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged the Justice Department to reopen the case.

Schumer said Wednesday: “The exhumation of the body of Emmett Till brings the Justice Department investigation to a much higher level.... In this rare instance, justice delayed will not be justice denied.”

Cynthia Yates, a spokeswoman in the FBI’s Chicago office, said the planned exhumation -- first reported Wednesday in the Chicago Sun-Times -- was part of the renewed inquiry.

Chicago playwright David Barr said Till’s mother, whom he worked with closely while researching his 1999 play, “State of Mississippi vs. Emmett Till,” never wanted her son’s body to be dug up.

Her idea of justice, Barr said, was an apology from the state of Mississippi. “And I am not sure we are going to get that, whether we have an exhumation or not,” Barr said.

Added history professor David Beito of the University of Alabama: “I don’t know what the significance of this move by the FBI is. It could be they found something and are trying to back it up. Or they could just be saying, ‘We did everything we could.’ ”

New York filmmaker Stanley Nelson -- who won an Emmy in 2003 for “The Murder of Emmett Till” -- said he thought the exhumation and new investigation were crucial.

“People who committed this horrible act, should they continue to be free just because 50 years have passed?” Nelson asked.

Nelson, who called Till a martyr, emphasized that the killing was never properly examined by authorities.

“This is not about reopening,” he said. “We are talking about something that was never opened in the first place. Should this brutal murder of a 14-year-old boy who did nothing be opened? I think there is no question.”

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Beckham reported from Alsip and Mehren from Boston.