Revisiting Emmett Till

The FBI announced yesterday that it was planning to exhume Emmett Till's body to perform the autopsy left undone when he was murdered fifty years ago. Till was a fourteen-year-old African-American from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi in the summer in 1955. A few nights after he reportedly whistled at a Caucasian woman in a store, he was kidnaped, savagely beaten, and murdered. Although such occurrences weren't unheard of in the South in the 1950s, this instance was different. After Till's body was shipped back to Chicago, his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral, and the world could see what had been done to him. Two white men were put on trial in Mississippi but acquitted by an all-white jury. One of the men later confessed the murder to Look magazine, but because of double jeopardy, the law could do nothing. All this has been credited as causing a major spark in the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement.

A year ago, authorities reopened the case to find some answers. There was speculation that more than just the two men tried for the crime had been involved, and those new suspects, if they were still alive, could still be tried and punished. It's not clear just what will be gained by an autopsy at this late date, and Till's family is split over the idea (registration required). One relative who does want to see the exhumation and autopsy take place, however, is Semion Wright, who was sharing a bed with Till the night he was kidnaped. In the original trial, the defense argued that the body was not that of Emmett Till, so the charges were invalid to begin with. Wright maintains that if the body can be identified as Till, the state of Mississippi would be in a position to pursue a suspect who may be able to place Carolyn Brown, the woman at the store, at the scene of the kidnaping. Brown is still alive and could still be prosecuted if a case against her can be assembled.