Posted on 05/04/2005 10:27:33 AM PDT by LauraleeBraswell
Edited on 05/04/2005 10:34:24 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Nearly 50 years after 14-year-old Emmett Till's murder shocked a nation and galvanized the civil rights movement, his body will be exhumed as federal authorities attempt to determine who killed him, the FBI said Wednesday.
Till's body, buried in a cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Alsip, will be exhumed within the next few weeks so the Cook County Medical Examiner's office can conduct an autopsy, said Deborah Madden, spokeswoman for the FBI's office in Jackson, Miss.
The black youth, who was raised in Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in the tiny Mississippi Delta community of Money on Aug. 28, 1955, reportedly for whistling at a white woman at a grocery store. His mutilated body was found in a river three days later.
The U.S. Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the Till investigation, saying it was triggered by several pieces of information including a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.
"The exhumation is a logical continuation of that," Madden said. "An autopsy was never performed on the body and the cause of death was never determined."
Two white men charged with the murder _ store owner Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman Till purportedly whistled at, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half brother _ were acquitted by an all-white jury. The two, now deceased, confessed to the killing months later in Look magazine.
Beauchamp claimed to have uncovered new evidence in his documentary "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till."
R. Alexander Acosta, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said the documentary films and new information indicates the two had accomplices who may still be alive.
Though the five-year statute of limitations in effect in 1955 means no federal charges could be brought, Mississippi state charges could still apply, Acosta said.
The Till case gave many Americans a closer look at the segregated South, its Jim Crow laws and lynchings. The boy was killed a little over a year after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed state-sponsored school segregation and about 100 days before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.
Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted that her son's body be displayed in an open casket at his funeral, forcing the nation to see the brutality directed at blacks in the South at the time. Mobley died in 2003. She is buried next to her son.
Leni
Well for starters go find the Look magazine article and read the interview with Till's murderers. They deserve no sympathy whatsoever. They killed him because he was an "uppity black", and they weren't going to tolerate a black not knowing his place in Mississippi.
It's at pbs.org, as well as letters that were written to Look magazine after it ran the interview.
And those already dead should have their remains dug up and desecrated all over the place, right, LauraleeBraswell and Paradox.
After all it isn't like tens of thousands of worse crimes haven't been committed around the nation, both north and south, by every race, creed and color, both to their own kind and every other kind, over these past fifty years.
I have no intention of defending the SOBs who committed this evil deed in 1955, in the deep south. By the same token, I am sick and tired of hearing the south trashed by people from places so unGodly corrupt and infested with fiends who make the worst of those good ol' boys look like Saints by comparison.
Evil happened, it is happening and will happen, from the looks of things, but the south is, was and never will be, one iota more evil than the rest of these United States.
""And those already dead should have their remains dug up and desecrated all over the place, right, LauraleeBraswell and Paradox. ""
No. But this young man deserves justice. And there are those willing to speak for him now.
Go into to any black section of any city and say something today and see what happens to you?
Regardless of how true that may or may not be, it doesn't make it acceptable -- no matter who does it.
Every murder victem including abortees deserve justice-why aren't we digging up bodies all over the country and re-autopsing them by less biased Coroners?
I want justice for every murder victem from Abel to those being murdered as we discuss this. I also want to see the south treated as justly as every other place in America, and not portrayed as more evil than much more evil places.
"When her husband was away, Carolyn Bryant never slept in the store, never stayed there alone after dark.
"Bobo Till was 14 years old: He was stocky, muscular, weighing about 160, five feet four or five. Preacher later testified: "He looked like a man."
"Carolyn was behind the counter; Bobo in front. He asked for two cents' worth of bubble gum. She handed it to him. He squeezed her hand and said: "How about a date, baby?"
"She jerked away and started for Juanita Milam. At the break between counters, Bobo jumped in front of her, perhaps caught her at the waist, and said: "You needn't be afraid o' me, Baby. I been with white girls before."
"At this point, a cousin ran in [Bobo's gang was hanging around outside the store], grabbed Bobo and began pulling him out of the store.
[One wonders what Bobo might have done next, had his cousin not pulled him off the woman.]
"Carolyn now ran, not for Juanita, but out the front, and got the pistol from the Milam car.
[The poor woman must have been terrified, being all alone except for the children and Juanita in the back of the store.]
"Outside, with Bobo being ushered off by his cousins, and with Carolyn getting the gun, Bobo executed the 'wolf whistle'"
So, the whistling was the least of it.
These events don't seem the act of an innocent child to me.
So he's not the innocent lamb the media makes him out to be.
After attacking this woman, he should have been arrested.
My point was, why do you need to exhume his body in order to prosecute self-confessed killers?
If that is what must be done in order to try these men then so be it, but I can see bitter racial tensions resulting from this action.
But he wasn't arrested, was he? And when you read the account it seems that the reason they killed him was not so much his treatment of the white woman, but more the fact that he wouldn't humble himself before them. That's what really got them fired up.
It's funny that you could read that interview and find more reason to denigrate that boy, than you can the bastards who admitted killing him.
Presuming we accept the Look Magazine as factual in lieu of Caroly Bryant's trial testimony, what you've got is a smart *ss 14 year old who was willfully kidnapped and murdered, rather than a plain vanilla 14 year old who was willfully kidnapped and murdered. Same crime, the murderers deserve punishment, the maximum imo. Your contension that he should have been arrested is pure strawman, and thoroughly irrelevant to the crime on both a legal and moral basis.
As pertains to any new charges, we don't know that anyone's confessed, we may just have a now willing witness to the crime. I don't know that it will raise racial tensions, it certainly could, particularly if an attack the victim defense is used. Or in the event of a non-prosecution. That's unfortunate, but not a reason not to prosecute, or to prosecute in the face of weak evidence.
From the account in Look Magazine, he seems very likely a rapist--or fast on his way to becoming one.
His behavior makes me wonder about the nature of the relationships he bragged to his gang about.
Perhaps his former "girlfriends" might have a different opinion of their "relationship" to him.
Your contension that he should have been arrested is pure strawman, and thoroughly irrelevant to the crime on both a legal and moral basis.
If what he did matters not, then why does the liberal media keeps repeating his only crime was whistling instead of attempted rape?
It's funny that the media makes him out to be a little angel instead of a possible rapist.
To wit:
"When her husband was away, Carolyn Bryant never slept in the store, never stayed there alone after dark.
"Bobo Till was 14 years old: He was stocky, muscular, weighing about 160, five feet four or five. Preacher later testified: "He looked like a man."
"Carolyn was behind the counter; Bobo in front. He asked for two cents' worth of bubble gum. She handed it to him. He squeezed her hand and said: "How about a date, baby?"
"She jerked away and started for Juanita Milam. At the break between counters, Bobo jumped in front of her, perhaps caught her at the waist, and said: "You needn't be afraid o' me, Baby. I been with white girls before."
"At this point, a cousin ran in [Bobo's gang was hanging around outside the store], grabbed Bobo and began pulling him out of the store.
[One wonders what Bobo might have done next, had his cousin not pulled him off the woman.]
"Carolyn now ran . . . and got the pistol from the Milam car.
[Alone except for the children and Juanita, the poor woman was so terrified by Bobo, she ran for a gun.]
"Outside, with Bobo being ushered off by his cousins, and with Carolyn getting the gun, Bobo executed the 'wolf whistle'"
So as I suspected, the whistling was the least of it.
Right, attempted rape. The media is covering it up. Save the bandwidth of a response.
Well maybe the South shouldn't have lynched so many black people. If these things had never happened then This wouldn't be a problem now would it be?
""Every murder victem including abortees deserve justice-why aren't we digging up bodies all over the country and re-autopsing them by less biased Coroners?""
Let's start with giving justice to Emmet Till. Because it's important to some people.
I reread the article. I don't think it portrays the south unfairly or as evil. The excerpt below is factual, and doesn't draw any conclusions. I don't see anything else.
The Till case gave many Americans a closer look at the segregated South, its Jim Crow laws and lynchings. The boy was killed a little over a year after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed state-sponsored school segregation and about 100 days before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.
Why do you think the Cook County coroner (actually he's called the medical examiner) is biased? There's no question Till was murdered. Since an autopsy wasn't conducted in 1955, I think they're just dotting their i's in preparation for a prosecution. Which if it happens, will happen in Mississippi, in the South, which accrues to their credit.
Not only attempted rape--but also a hate crime.
Because Till targeted her precisely because she was white.
Guess it's a good thing they killed him. All I have time for now.
Adios
Well maybe there were no more black people or people of any other color, lynched in the south than in the north east or west. Maybe the south was, is, and always will be portrayed as the most evil, raciest SOBs in the USA, by the rest of the nation, to distract attention from their own, more evil, though more subtle racial lynchings.
Let's start with giving justice to every murder victem, because it is always important to some people, and should be important to all people.
"I don't see anything else."
That's the problem. Nobody from the parts of the country that gets a pass on it's racial bias sees that the south and southerners are portrayed as more racially biased and as expressing their bias in more violent ways than the rest of this country.
I didn't say the Cook County Medical Examiner (Coroner-whatever) was biased. I said why don't we go around the country digginging up all the bodies of murder victems and having them re-autopsied by less biased Coroners? Why should anyone in this country, familiar with the Mexicoesque graft and corruption Capital of the USA-Chicago-consider their Medical examiner to be any more trust worthy than, the good ol' boy Medical examiner in Mississippi, who did the original autopsy??
I read today that some relatives of Till were against the FBI disturbing his grave. Do their feelings count?
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