The Tragedy of Racism : History of America

"It's part of this bigger story, part of a history that we can learn from."
"The store should be one of the places [where] we share Emmett's story."
Reverend Wheeler Parker, 79, Money, Mississippi

"I did a lot of listening. And what I heard was a lot of pain."
"To move forward we've got to tell the story. We've got to tear off the scab and keep telling it."
Donna Spell, member, Emmett Till Memorial Commission

Emmett Till in a photograph taken by his mother on Christmas Day 1954

"Our community had been running from this since 1955."
"It's been complicated working with the family [that owns the original store involved in a white supremacist atrocity against a black teen]."
"I don't know if it's money or they want control of the story that's told, which has direct legacy implications for their father."
"I am hopeful that one day they can see a positive legacy by reclaiming the past."
Patrick Weems, co-founder, Emmett Till Interpretive Center

This is a dreadful drama that took place in Mississippi in 1955 when on an August day a young black teen, all of 14 years old, visiting the community of Money from his home in Chicago, walked into a grocery store alongside his cousin who lived in the town, to buy candy. The store, Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market, was owned by the white Bryant family. The owner of the store, Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam murdered the young boy.

The claim was that Emmett Till who was accompanied by his cousin Wheeler Parker, had whistled  at the white woman behind the counter. Because of this purported incident, the men in the store kidnapped, tortured and hung the boy, then dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. They had tethered a 34-kilogram fan from a cotton gin to his neck, a symbolism reflecting just how serious an affront against racial dignity he had committed.

In a photo provided by his family, Emmett Till poses in Chicago about six months before he was killed in 1955.

The boy had been kidnapped from his uncle’s home four days following the encounter at the store when the two men in the dead of night purposed to carry out their horrible plan. The boy's nose had been crushed, his left eye was gone, his right eye dangling on his cheek while a hole had been blown in his right temple and most of his teeth were missing. His mutilated body was found three days later in the muddy Tallahatchie River, weighted down with that cotton gin fan.

His funeral took place where he had lived with his family in Chicago. His mother had ordered an open casket, to the shock of the public. She felt the sight of her son’s battered body should be seen and not covered up as though in shame. Her son's murder has been credited with kindling the civil rights movement. Emmett Till's mother knew the right thing to do was to show and tell, not hide the truth. That everyone should know how her child died as well as why he did. It was her tribute to her son.

The two men faced a trial for murder. And despite the obvious and the evidence, the testimony of Carolyn Bryant Donham in defence of her accused family members saw them acquitted by an all-white, obviously neutral jury, of the charges brought against them. Recently Carolyn Bryant Donham recanted some parts of the story she had told over 60 years ago, to exonerate the killers. Which led the Justice Department to reopen the case.

Informal tours of the abandoned bridge where it was presumed the boy's body had been thrown into the river, take place. Memorials to the young boy were erected in various places where the atrocity touched the town; several of the historical markers have seen repeatedly vandalized, and always replaced. In 2006, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission was founded, which restored the courtroom where Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were acquitted.

The Clarion Ledger

A marker outside the courtroom commemorates the boy, steps away from a monument erected to honour Confederate soldiers in memory of the American Civil War. The building housing Bryant's Grocery was purchased in the 1980s from the Bryant family by Ray Tribble, who had been on the jury of all white men who had seen fit thirty years earlier to acquit the two killers. The building remains in the possession of the Tribble family, though the owner died in 1998. Efforts to buy the building to restore it as part of a memorial to Emmett Till, have failed.

The store lies in ruins, roofless, its walls covered in vines. All the efforts of preservationists, politicians, business leaders, even the state of Mississippi, have come to naught in their intention to save the building and restore it as a memorial to the young boy. Public opinion is divided, with some viewing the store as a blot on the community while others insist it be restored as a tribute to Emmett, a reminder of the poisonous hatred that killed him.

The Tribble family has set the price of the ruins of Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market at $4 million, clearly as a deterrent to its sale, but remaining speculative, since the family refuses to discuss the issue. They did lower the price of the store, which they claim to want to sell; their original selling price was $40 million. Mr. Weems of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, has attempted to negotiate with the family for the past several years with nothing accomplished for his efforts.

"I don’t know why, but every time the process breaks down, it seems the Tribble family is unwilling to let their store be turned into a monument that might suggest the complicity of their patriarch in letting Till’s killers walk free."
"There have been seven to ten efforts to buy the store, and there have been thousands of dollars offered [for a property for which the assessed value is $20,000]."
Dave Tell, author of a book about Emmett Till

Vines and warning signs cover the walls of the two-story, whitewashed brick building that was Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Miss., in this 2005 photo. The store is where Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth, whistled at the owner's white wife and paid for the act with his life in August 1955.