The trial and acquittal of Emmett Till's killers

The trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam opened on September 19, 1955, in the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, before an all-white, all-male jury in a segregated courtroom. In an act of extraordinary courage, Till's great-uncle Mose Wright stood and pointed out the two men in open court as those who had taken his nephew, among the first times a Black man had publicly accused white men of such a crime in the Delta.

The evidence was overwhelming, yet on September 23 the jury acquitted both men after roughly an hour's deliberation; one juror reportedly said it would not have taken so long had they not paused for a soda. Months later, protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam confessed to the killing in a paid interview with Look magazine. The accuser, Carolyn Bryant, whose claim set the murder in motion, is reported to have recanted key parts of her account decades later. The acquittal, Jim Crow justice staged for the world's cameras, helped turn national outrage into a movement.