Why Did The Emmett Till Murder Trial

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her spot on a Montgomery bus to a white person. This led to the boycott of the Montgomery bus system. While she was boycotting, she had in mind the lynching of Emmett Till. Rosa Parks wrote " the news of Emmett's death caused me...to participate in the cry for justice and equal rights" (“Emmett Till Murder Trial”). Emmett Till, an African American boy, sparked the Montgomery boycott, in the memory of Rosa Parks. In August 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy visiting family in Mississippi, was accused of flirting with a white woman in a store. From Chicago, Till did not quite understand the extent of Southern racism even though his cousins tried to warn him (“Emmett Till

Till begged his mother Mamie to let him go with them. At the beginning, Till’s mother was against the whole Idea. Mamie new that people in the south were brutal to African-American. His mother proposed that they should go on a road trip together through Omaha, Nebraska, and tried to convince him by telling him she would teach him how to drive. However, His mother eventually gave in and said that he could go with him. Before Till had left for his trip to Mississippi his mother decided to give him his father’s signet ring with the initials L.T graved in it (“Emmett

During the trial, Moses Wright took the stand and testified against Bryant and Milam who had killed his nephew. During this time it was unheard of for a black man to openly accuse a white man because they were afraid that if they did they would be grave danger. Before the trial, Moses put his wife Elizabeth on a train to a Chicago. She wrote him a letter begging him not to testify against them because she was scared that something might happen to him if the two white men were set free. When Wright was testifying he said the simple words “Thar he” (“Brave Testimony”). When he said thar he Wright was meaning that there he said that he is there. After the trial Wright fled to Chicago to meet up with his wife, leaving behind his car and his cotton field. On September 23, an all white jury’s deliberations had lasted only 67 minutes and the verdict was that Bryant and Milam were not guilty for the death of Till. Only a few month later Bryant and Milam confessed that they committed the crime but could not be prosected since they were protected by the double jeopardy law and was also offered money in return. They told Look magazine everything for $4000. After Bryant and Milam confessed their whole story both of them were ostracized by the Afrrcan-Americans. African-Americans stopped going to groceries owned by the Bryant and Milam families. Soon after that