Seven decades after the brutal murder of Emmett Till, President Donald Trump’s administration has released more than 6,500 pages of the murder investigation of the 14-year-old boy from Chicago.
Till, who grew up in the Woodlawn neighborhood just a few blocks from the Chicago Crusader office, was murdered after he was kidnapped by two white men in Money, Mississippi on August 28, 1955.
On the 70th anniversary of a murder that shocked the world and sparked the Civil Rights Movement, individuals can now view and examine numerous documents that shed light into the U.S. government’s investigation under President Dwight Eisenhower.
Meanwhile in Chicago, a special ceremony was scheduled to mark the 70th anniversary on Thursday August 28 at Burr Oak Cemetery where Till is buried.
Till allegedly whistled at a white woman at a grocery store. His body was found brutally beaten days later in the Tallahatchie River. The murder made global headlines after Ebony and Jet magazines published a photo of Till’s badly disfigured face.
In Chicago, Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, held an open casket funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville to show the world what the two men had done to her son. Till was buried at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL.
Historians believe Till’s murder sparked the Civil Rights Movement after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, outraged because of the boy’s death.
The men who killed Till, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were acquitted in a trial that lasted just an hour. The U.S. government for decades held the files while Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley fought for justice for her son. She died in 2003. Carolyn Bryant Dunham, the woman who falsely accused Till of whistling at her, died in 2023.
The declassified documents include a memo where FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover claims there was not enough evidence to indict the two alleged killers on federal kidnapping or civil rights charges. They also include letters from citizens about the Till murder and Justice Department responses and the FBI correspondence on the preliminary investigation and the two men later acquitted of murdering Till.
The released documents also include numerous clips from newspapers that reported on Till’s murder and the many meetings and protests from individuals seeking justice. There’s an October 5, 1955 copy of Jet magazine that includes a story of Till’s “strange trial” and a front-page story of the boy’s murder in The Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most widely read Black newspapers at the time.
There’s also an October 1955 newspaper clipping from the United Press International (UPI), which reported that 50 Black leaders including activist Augustus Savage, editor of American Negro Magazine, traveled to Washington, D.C. to appeal to U.S. Justice Department to intervene in Till’s case, which some newspapers reported as the “Wolf Whistle Case.”
Another press clipping reported on a meeting at Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church in Bronzeville where Willie Reed spoke of his accounts as an eyewitness who said he saw Till on the back of a truck driven by two white men. Reed, who did not testify during the trial, died in 2013.
In the government’s Till murder documents was also a newspaper clipping from the Associated Press that reported on Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. urging a national boycott of everything made in Mississippi.
There’s also a copy of Look Magazine’s infamous story where Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam admitted to killing Till after they were acquitted on all murder charges. Journalist and author William Bradford Huie wrote the story, which claims Till while in captivity, tells the white men that he had other white women and that Till did not think that white men would kill him.
There is also a letter from Tuskegee Institute, a HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) which attached a document on the latest known lynching statistics in the U.S. The statistics show there were 538 lynchings of Black citizens in Mississippi from 1882 to 1959, the highest in the nation. Georgia had the second highest with 491. Illinois had 19.
The unsealed records include notable correspondence and documents from: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); the Office of Research and Intelligence of the U.S. Information Agency; the Office of the Director of the U.S. Information Agency; the Department of State; the Department of State’s embassy in Caracas, Venezuela; the Criminal Division of the DOJ; the General Litigation Section of the Criminal Division of the DOJ; and the Staff Secretary of the White House.
Additional documents came from the Office of the Director of the FBI and FBI field offices in Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, New Orleans, and New York. There is signed correspondence from Dr. T. R. M. Howard, J. Edgar Hoover, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Congressman Peter W. Rodino, among several other members of Congress.
The records include additional notable correspondence from the American Communications Association; the American Jewish Committee; the American Jewish Congress; the Chief of Police of the City of Greenwood, Mississippi; the Congregational Conference of Southern California and the Southwest; the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union; the Liberal Party of Bronx County, New York; the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mississippi; the New Jersey State Council of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
More documents are on file from the Office of the Mayor and City Clerk of Norwalk, Connecticut; the Office of the Secretary of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts; The Protestant Council of the City of New York, Bronx Division; the Tuskegee Institute; the Ty Holland Civic Association; the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW); the Wisconsin State Industrial Union Council; the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Detroit; and the Mississippi Supreme Court.