Who was Emmett Till’s father?
Louis Till (February 7, 1922 – July 2, 1945) was an American soldier. He was the father of Emmett Till, whose murder in August 1955 at the age of 14 galvanized the Civil rights movement. A soldier during World War II, Louis Till was executed by the U.S. Army in 1945 after being found guilty of murder and rape.
The full details of Louis Till’s crimes and execution only emerged ten years later. On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, after reportedly trying to flirt with Carolyn Bryant, a local white woman. (Years later, a historian claimed that Bryant disclosed to him that she had fabricated testimony that Till made verbal or physical advances towards her in the store. However, the family of Bryant has disputed this claim.) Her husband and brother-in-law abducted Till and beat him to death, then threw his body into the river. Both were arrested, charged with and tried for first-degree murder, but were acquitted by an all-white jury. After the trial gained international media attention, Mississippi senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis uncovered details about Louis Till’s crimes and execution and released them to reporters.
The full details of Louis Till’s crimes and execution only emerged ten years later. On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, after reportedly trying to flirt with Carolyn Bryant, a local white woman.
Life. Louis Till grew up an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri. As a young man he worked at the Argo Corn Company and was an amateur boxer. At the age of 17, Till began courting Mamie Carthan, a woman of the same age. Her parents disapproved, thinking the charismatic Till was “too sophisticated” for their daughter.
The Southern media extensively covered the story: various editorials claimed that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the “Yankee” media had covered up, or lied about, the record of Emmett Till’s father.
Wideman stated that he could not “rescue Louis Till from prison and the hangman”.
What happened to Emmett Till’s head?
John Edgar Wideman, in “Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File,” reports that the top of Emmett’s head was crushed in, one eye was missing, and his face had “all the human being battered out of it.”. Wideman and I both remember finding it almost impossible to look at the picture of Emmett Till’s face in the Sept. 15, 1955, issue of Jet.
Louis Till was Emmett’s father, an abusive husband who did not really know his son. Ten years before Emmett was murdered by Mississippi racists, 23-year-old Louis Till was executed by a racist American military system. The coincidences and parallels are almost surreal. Louis Till was accused of raping two women and murdering another in Italy in …
Emmett is like an Anne Frank figure. But unlike Anne, age 15 when her family was betrayed to the Nazis, 14-year-old Emmett had no chance to express his humanity — although his valiant mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, did her best in a poignant autobiography.
When Emmett’s body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River, the state of Mississippi ordered its immediate burial, but his mother insisted on its being returned to her in Chicago. His boxed remains arrived under official Mississippi seal, to be buried without opening.
Louis Till was buried in the infamous Plot E of a United States military cemetery in France, reserved for executed servicemen.
Both trials, of Emmett’s alleged killers and Louis’s alleged crime, were a farce. During the trial of Emmett’s killers, Louis ’s confidential military record was mysteriously declassified and leaked to the press just in time to sabotage any chance of a kidnapping conviction. Southern justice blamed the son for the sins of …
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