Emmett Till was 14 when he was kidnapped and murdered. Everyone should know his story.

This story contains depictions of violence and images of injuries that readers might find distressing.

When Mamie Till visited her son’s lifeless body after he was beaten to death, he was so disfigured that a ring he wore was the only thing that could identify him.

The sheriff called for the 14-year-old boy to be buried immediately. Instead, Mamie wanted the world to see him.

Emmett Till was born in 1941 and raised in Chicago. He contracted polio as a child, leaving him with a speech impediment. His mother taught him how to whistle to overcome his stutter.

In August 1955, Emmett was visiting family in Money, Mississippi. He stopped by a grocery store, where he encountered a woman named Carolyn Bryant working behind the counter.

What happened between Emmett and Carolyn in the store has been a matter of conjecture over many years. She claims the boy wolf-whistled at her.

Four days later, Carolyn's husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, JW Milam, both Army veterans, kidnapped Emmett at gunpoint from his great-uncle's house.

The men took him to a barn about 45 minutes away and tortured him.

They beat him, shot him, strung barbed wire around his neck and removed one of his eyes, before dumping his body in the river. 

Emmett's injuries were so significant, his features could not be distinguished when he was pulled from the water.

Mamie was then called to identify her son – who looked nothing like her son anymore – and bravely decided to have an open casket, public showing.

"You didn’t die for nothing," she said as his body was transferred to a hearse.

Approximately 250,000 people paid their respects to the family over the four days and saw firsthand what had been done to Emmett.

At Mamie's invitation, photographer David Jackson captured her gazing into the casket. 

He published the image in Jet, a mainly Black magazine, alongside two more images – one of Emmett alive and the other of him dead. 

The images and his death would act as a catalyst to spark the civil rights movement, despite never receiving justice for what happened to him.

Image: Time.

Image: Time.

According to The New York Times, historians believe that several white men were involved in the torture and murder of Emmett, though only Bryant and Milam were put on trial in 1955.

Carolyn Bryant testified and said the 14-year-old had physically and verbally harnessed her in the store.

After five days and an hour of jury deliberation, Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury. 

It meant they could not be trialled again, even after they later confessed in a paid magazine interview that they killed Emmett.

Roy Bryant died in 1994 and Milam died in 1981.

When Carolyn Bryant was in her 80s and remarried, FBI investigators and federal prosecutors revisited the case and the potential for prosecuting her.

She had previously given an interview where she said that her harassment claim was untrue. 

However, they closed the case in 2021, after the Justice Department was unable to confirm whether Bryant actually went back on her previous testimony, and it closed the case.

Bryant, the last living person directly involved in the case, died in April 2023, at age 88.

Following the trial, there was an uproar. There were public protests, sit-ins and mass meetings that were instrumental in furthering the civil rights movement in the US. 

"I realised that this could just as easily have been a story about me or my brother," Muhammad Ali said.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama, saying that she found herself unable to move because she was thinking about Emmett.

In 2022, President Biden signed a bill named for the 14-year-old boy, making lynching a federal hate crime.

Although it's been over 80 years since the death of Emmett Till, his story continues to resonate - not just because of how devastating it is, but because we hear about similar ones, happening to other young Black men, all too frequently.

Feature image: Getty/Mamamia.