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September 5, 2025 10 mins

Dr. Vanessa Tyler revisits the death of Emmett Till on what would have been his 84th birthday. Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy visiting Mississippi from Chicago in 1955 when he was abducted and brutally murdered by a gang of white men because he whistled at a white lady. Museums in Mississippi commemorate this pivotal point in American history and the Civil Rights Movement with a new display of the gun that killed young Emmett.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's been seventy years, but we can't let age fade
the hate of history.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm telling you, I can still feel what happened to
me when I first looked into the casket.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
What made me tell Mobley saw back in nineteen fifty
five was grotesque, horrible what racist whites did to her
handsome fourteen year old son, Emmett. But looking at his body,
she didn't faint. She fought.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Let the people see what I've seen, and I want
open casket viewing.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Now, seventy years later, on August twenty eighth, twenty twenty five,
what would have been EMMETT. Till's eighty fourth birthday, Till's
murder is still making news.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
Well, today we're here to announce that we've acquired the
weapon or a weapon that was used during till's murder.
The forty five caliber pistol and holster was owned by J. W. Milem,
one of the individuals who confessed to participate in Till's murder.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Looking at the gun that fired the bullet into the
head of fourteen year old Emmett Till, Pain still felt
in Blackland and now.

Speaker 5 (01:13):
As a brown person, you just feel so invisible.

Speaker 6 (01:17):
Where We're from brothers and sisters.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
I welcome you to this joyful.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
Day we celebrate freedom.

Speaker 6 (01:24):
Where we are.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I know someone's heard something and where we're going.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
We the people means all the people.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your host Vanessa Tyler.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's a big deal for the two museums, the Museum
of Mississippi and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, which acquired
the gun.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
The acquisition of these artifacts is important because it allows
us to tell a full story about what happened to Emmett Till.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Many of us may not have realized Emmett Till was shot
since he was so badly beaten and disfigured when the
world saw him in nineteen fifty five in Jet magazine,
and after the deadly deed was done, he was weighed
down with a cotton mill fan and dumped in the
Tallahatchie River.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Well today actually marks seventy years since his untimely death.
The Foundation for Mississippi History negotiated with the family that
owned the gun, and then they donated. The Foundation donated
the artifact to the Misisippi Department of Archives. In history
and now we have it them on display in civil rights museum.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
That's Michael Morris, the director of the two museums, and
this piece of American history is now in his museum.
Those who donated it only did so if they could
remain anonymous.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
When we learned about the existence of this artifact, that
it was still around, we thought we had a moral
obligation to go out and find it and try to
acquire it.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
But there is something about this piece, the forty five
caliber pistol, that sends chills to the director of Collections,
Nan Prince.

Speaker 7 (03:03):
This weapon has affected me more so than any other
artifact that I've encountered in my thirty year museum career.
It's the emotions that are centered around it are hard.
It's a hard thing to see and a hard thing
to convey.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Many today not even born when it happened. In fact,
Till's cousin, the now Reverend Wheeler Parker Junior, was a
teen himself and is the last person alive who was
in the house located in a place named Muddy, Mississippi,
when the white mob burst in looking for the city
slicker black boy from Chicago who didn't know Southern protocol

(03:40):
when he committed the death penalty sin of whistling at
a white woman, the woman who owned the store. Till
went in Carolyn Bryant.

Speaker 6 (03:47):
Coming out of the store, she turns to her left
and as Emmett was he loved to make people laugh. He gave the
wolf whistle. There's so many different stories told about that
and what had happened and all of that. Where he
whistled her, he did whistle at her. And when he
did that, we just could not believed in Mississippi nineteen

(04:11):
fifty five that he whistled this white lead where.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
People have been killed, which is exactly the fate that
awaited him. It was days later Bryant's husband, Roy Bryant,
and his half brother J. W. Milam came seeking Southern justice.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
In nineteen fifty five, when my only child was killed,
it seemed that there was nothing for me to live for.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Mamie Till Mobley did live, and is credited with doing
something so courageous. It was the seed that grew a
civil rights movement. It was said Rosa Parks had Till's
death on her mind months later when she refused to
move to the back of the bus, and reportedly it
was no coincidence. Doctor Martin Luther King Junior's march on
Washington took place on August twenty eighth, the same date

(04:57):
of Till's birthday. Years later in nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
They never.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Confessed repentance, They never regretted what they had done. In fact,
in a three way conversation with Bryant, he said he
would do the same thing over again, and not only
to Emmett Till, but to whoever got in his way.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
That's Mamie Till Mobley's last interview. She died about a
month later, at age eighty one. Back in two thousand
and three, she made clear her life as an advocate
educator had no room in it for the hate of
white men who murdered her son, who were, of course
acquitted by an all white jury. They later admitted it
during a paid interview. It was all part of American history.

(05:46):
Now they're all dead, including Carolyn Bryant, who carried lies
she told about Emmett Till to her grieve.

Speaker 8 (05:52):
Distinguished guests, the President of the United States accompanied by
the Vice President of the United States and Reverend Wheeler
Parker jr.

Speaker 5 (06:08):
To our President Joe Biden, members of Congress, the members
of the Till family, and my fellow Americans. Today we
gather to remember our history. We gather to remember an
act of astonishing violence and hate, and to honor the
courage of those who called upon our nation to look

(06:33):
with open eyes at that horror. Today, there are those
in our nation who would prefer to erase or even
rewrite the ugly parts of our past. Those who attempt
to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery, Those who
insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, who try

(06:56):
to divide our nation with unnecessary debates. Let us not
be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better
if we forget.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Two years ago, the Till family was invited to an
event at the White House to witness President Biden sign
into law the creation of a non contiguous national monument
to Emmett Till and his heroic mother, Maimie Till Mobley.
The monuments are in Robert's Temple Church of God in
the Bronzeville section of Chicago, where the funeral with the

(07:31):
open casket was held. There are also plaques in Mississippi
near the Tallahatchie River where his body was retrieved, and
the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where the men
who obviously did it had that farce of a trial
and were acquitted. His cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker, spoke before
the distinguished guests, including lawmakers who helped pass the Emmett

(07:55):
till Anti lynching bill President Biden had previously signed into law.

Speaker 6 (08:01):
It has been quite a journey for me from the
darkness to the light. When I sat with my family
on the night of terror, when Emmett Till, our beloved Bobo
was taken from us, taken to be tortured, brutally murdered.
Back then, when I was overwhelmed with terror and fear

(08:24):
of certain death in the darkness of a thousand.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Midnights, President Biden marveled about maybe how in her pain
she did what she did.

Speaker 9 (08:33):
Insisting on an open casket.

Speaker 8 (08:34):
for her murdered and I might add, nmamed and mutilated.

Speaker 9 (08:39):
Son fourteen years old, fourteen years old, she said, let
the people see what I've seen. Let the people see
what I have seen. My God, hate never goes away,

(09:00):
just hides.

Speaker 8 (09:01):
It hides under the rocks and given a little bit
of Oxygen like bad people, it comes roaring out.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Again Biden also credits those who made sure the story
was told.

Speaker 8 (09:15):
The reason the world saw what mrs till Mobley saw
was because another hero in this story, the Black press
I'm serious Jet magazine, The Chicago Defender, and other newspapers and

(09:37):
radio announcers who told the story were unflinching.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
And with that he signed the proclamation two years ago.

Speaker 8 (09:45):
About commission on signing establishes the Emmett Till Mamie Till Mobley

Speaker 1 (09:54):
National Monument, which brings us back to today and the
museums in Mississippi where MuseuM director Michael Morris tells me
one could only speculate Mamie Till Mobley would want the
gun on displayed.

Speaker 10 (10:06):
To That's one of the reasons, Vanessa, I was so
proud to have some of the members of our Board
of Trustees standing right with me, because you know, they
really do set the tone for the agency, and I
think it just really shows a commitment that we have
to truth telling here and a commitment to our mission.

(10:27):
You know, our mission and our vision rather is empowering
people through Mississippi stories.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
And this Mississippi story is the story of America. I'm
Vanessa Tyler, it has been my honor telling stories in
black Land,
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Host

Vanessa Tyler

Vanessa Tyler

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