US releases Emmett Till investigation records ahead of 70th anniversary of his killing
Just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of his killing, the federal government made public thousands of pages of records Friday on the lynching of Emmett Till. The records in the National Archives, released by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, detail how the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights responded to the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Till. The records were released in accordance with the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018."Our thoughts are with the Till family," the National Archives and Records Administration said in a news release.The Chicago teenager was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman at a grocery store in rural Mississippi. Four days later, Till was abducted from a great-uncle's home in the predawn hours by Roy Bryant and John William "J. W." Milam. The white men tortured and killed Till in a barn in a neighboring county, and his body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Bryant and Milam were charged with murder in Till's death but were acquitted by an all-white-male jury. Bryant and Milam later confessed to a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till.His killing galvanized the Civil Rights Movement after Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket so that the country could see the brutality. In 2022, President Joe Biden signed a bill named for Till that made lynching a federal hate crime. And in 2023, Biden signed a proclamation establishing a national monument honoring Till and his mother.Many of the records have never been seen by the public. They include reports, telegrams, case files and correspondences and documents from the NAACP, the White House, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, among others.The records can be viewed in the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection on the National Archives and Records Administration website.Sister station WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi, reports that a member of Emmett Till's family says she is grateful that the DOJ has released the files on the teenager's 1955 lynching death, despite having concerns about the current state of civil rights in Mississippi and in the country."Although I still have many serious concerns about justice being done in this case, still, I am thankful, and I am hoping this release of information will be helpful," Priscilla Williams Till, Emmett Till's cousin, said in a statement. WAPT reports that Williams Till is expected to attend a news conference on Aug. 26 with her attorney, Malik Shabazz, to further discuss the release of the documents."The release of the Emmett Till investigation files is very important to get to the truth of this matter. We will be analyzing them carefully," Shabazz said in a statement. __Sister station WAPT contributed to this report.
