Emmett Till Short Story

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With only fourteen years behind him, Emmett Louis Till’s short life was drastically taken away from him. Whilst visiting his family in Mississippi, the African American Chicagoan was brutally murdered due to a possible misunderstanding turned “hate crime.” Although many people can say they have heard of him, not many can explain his story. Therefore, it is vital to understand what happened to him, and why. One aspect to be clarified about the murder is the identity of the reportedly harassed woman. At twenty-one years old, Carol Bryant and her husband, Roy Bryant, owned the Bryant Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Mississippi. As the store clerk, Mrs. Bryant encountered many people – each of diverse backgrounds. Yet, on August 24, 1955, Bryant was faced with Mr. Till and his confident yet playful demeanor. After a short interaction, the accusation of Emmett and his disrespectful ways appeared, along with the possible anger from not being referred to as ma’am. There are many reports regarding the interaction between the two; the most noted was George Murray’s interview with Till’s cousin Wheeler Parker in the September 1955 article Chicago America “I never went in the store.…show more content…
Roy Bryant (Carol Bryant’s husband) and his half-brother Milam admitted to finding and abducting Till from his uncle’s house On August 28, 1955. There are several versions to the murder mystery, such as “[They] interrogated the boy and let him go, ‘‘whacked’’ him a few times with a Colt .45, beat him so severely that neighbors heard screams for mercy and mother, castrated him and stuffed his penis in his mouth, drilled completely though his head with a brace and bit, or -- what has become the most widely accepted version of the story -- beat him, stripped him, shot him in the head, attached his naked and lifeless body to a cotton-gin fan with a length of barbed wire, and sank him in the Tallahatchie river (Tell

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