The brutality of Emmett Till's killing, displayed to the world through a collection of images from his open-casket funeral service in Chicago, sparked a wave of outrage and galvanized what would eventually become the civil rights movement.
JACKSON, Mississippi – Three months have passed since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis after a former police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Days after the incident, Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, abducted Till from his great-uncle's home and he was severely beaten and lynched before being shot. His body was then dumped in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a 70-pound fan, and recovered several days later.
Tell said the photo set the stage for the Till generation: a group of young Black men and women, including the late Rep. John Lewis, the Ladner sisters, and other iconic figures in the civil rights movement, who flooded Mississippi in the 1960s demanding action. "We've been seeing things happen for the last several years, but this one here just sparked a movement, and that's what the Till case did," he said."There had been outrage over Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice and all these other cases. ... that built up to what finally happened with what we see with the George Floyd case. It's unlike anything I've seen.
"We're trying to appeal to from the top level of our government down to the local authorities to push forward this 65-year-old murder case," Watts said. The petition was originally meant to launch earlier in the year, but the COVID-19 pandemic put the plan on hold. Watts said the ETLF focused on other aspects of its Justice for Emmett Till campaign until they were able to finally launch the petition on Emmett's birthday, July 25. At time of writing, the petition had over 3,900 signatures.
"Between what they knew before, unless they have more evidence for a manslaughter charge, I don't know that they could make anything stick, to be honest," he said."I just don't see where the evidence is that would get them to indict."
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