Emmett Louis Till

Bill Duke Remembers Getting the News about Emmett Till’s Murder (Flashback)

 

In today’s flashback, Bill Duke reflected on growing up in Poughkeepsie, NY during the 1940s and 1950s. His parents moved north to escape the oppression of the Jim Crow south equipped with just a 2nd and 3rd-grade education, respectively. Bill Duke opened up about some of his early experiences dealing with racism and how some whites defied the racist logic of the time as well.  He recalled what it was like being a pre-teen when the Emmitt Till story made national headlines. Duke tried holding back his emotions while remembering Emmitt Till’s murder and said he could never forget the incident or the horrific images. He also pointed out that the White woman who accused him of whistling at her came forward years later and admitted she lied. Duke said it was a difficult time but acknowledged that Till’s open-casket funeral brought a lot of attention to the abuse and oppression Blacks were facing in the south.

 

 

 

The Murder of Emmett Till
FROM THE COLLECTIONS: CIVIL RIGHTS | THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Film Description
In August 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy allegedly insulted a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn’t understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two White men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally, and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterward, the defendants sold their story, including their tale of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till’s death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/till/#part01 

 

 

 

Citation

Bagwell, Orlando. Interview with Myrlie Evers, conducted by Blackside, Inc. on November 27, 1985

Gado, Mark. Mississippi Madness: The Story of Emmett Till. 2013. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/emmett_till/7.html

Joyce A. Ladner. the Mississippi Writers Page. April 2003. http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/ladner_joyce/index.html

Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987).

Linder, Douglas. The Emmett Till Murder Trial: A Chronology. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/till/emmetttillchrono.html

Ladner, Joyce. Recollection of conversation with Till’s mother, in the context of a Brookings Institution panel discussion on the Civil Right Movement

Metress, Christopher. The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2002.

Till-Mobley, Mamie, and Chris Benson. Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. New York: Random House, 2003.

Transcript – Emmet Till trial Sept 1955. Mose Wright.

Transcript – Emmett Till trial Sept 1955. Willie Reed.

https://fsu.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fsu%3A603133/datastream/OBJ/view/Clarion-Ledger.pdf


[1] Metress, Christopher. Chapter 1: Discovery and Indictment, page 15

[2] Linder, Douglas. The Emmett Till Murder Trial: A Chronology

[3] Metress, Christopher. “They Stand Accused”: James L. Hicks’s Investigations in Sumner, Mississippi, September 1955

[4] Transcript-Emmett Till trial Sept 1955. Willie Reed.

[5] Ladner, Joyce. Recollection of conversation with Till’s mother, in the context of a Brookings Institution panel discussion on the Civil Right Movement

[6] Joyce A. Ladner. the Mississippi Writers Page. April 2003

[7] Gado, Mark. Mississippi Madness: The Story of Emmett Till.

[8] page 104 Metress Christopher

[9] Transcript – Emmet Till Trial Sept 1955. Mose Wright. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/till/MoseWright.pdf

[10] Linder, Douglas. The Emmett Till Murder Trial: A Chronology

[11] Linder, Douglas. The Emmett Till Murder Trial: A Chronology

[12] Bagwell, Orlando. Interview with Myrlie Evers, conducted by Blackside, Inc. on November 27, 1985

[13] Northern Eastern University. Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.

[14] The Department Of Justice. Civil Rights Era Cold Case Investigation Continue. 2010

[15] Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 page 37

[16] Till-Mobley and Benson. page 191-196

[17] Juan Williams, author of Eyes on the Prize and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/till/The%20Death%20of%20Emmett%20Till%20Bob%20Dylan%20Clip.mp3.     

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/9/3/21420388/emmett-till-childhood-home-chicago-landmark?fbclid=IwAR2frs6lNM92iLTKNhLs2IlaqdIlV3nW_MHpR-uUaZzCGcmOF79MR_gRsSU

 

Abriel Thomas, a cousin of Emmett Till, holds a triptych showing childhood photos of Till in his home in Chicago Monday.  Jeff Roberson, Associated Press

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