1955 - Emmett Till Killed in Mississippi Pittsburgh Courier, Sept. 10, 1955 In one of the defining events in the struggle for civil rights in America, 14-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago was killed by racists while visiting relatives in Mississippi.
CHICAGO, ILL. - ''Let the people see what they have done to my boy.'' This agonized cry, wrenched from the pain racked lips of Mrs. Mamie Bradley, can easily become the opening gun in a war on Dixie which can reverberate around the world.
More than 100,000 people from every walk of life - black and white alike - have walked by the pine casket of 14 year-old Emmett Till.
Emmett Till, a name to remember in the days, and months, and years to come. A Chicago boy, a former polio victim, who went to Mississippi to visit relatives and returned to his home in a sealed casket.
Emmett Till, a healthy, observing youngster, who couldn’t believe that any place in America was so barbaric, such a throwback to the ''Savage Age'' that they would take a life for naught:
Emmett Till, whose life was sacrificed on the altar of a fallacious ''White Supremacy'' doctrine:
Emmett Till, whose only ''crime'' was that he allegedly whistled at a white woman. Because of this boyish prank Emmett was kidnapped from the home of his uncle and spirited away. Three days later, his lifeless body, weighted down with a 150 pound cotton gin fan and with a bullet hole in his head, was found floating down Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River.
Special details of detectives and police were on hand to keep traffic moving and see that the murmuring crowd of sympathizers remained in check. Raynor and Sons' Funeral Home, several blocks away, had suffered a considerable amount of damage prior to the funeral last Friday when another crowd also estimated at 10,000, had visited the establishment to view the remains.
Burial ceremonies were delayed until Tuesday of this week after Mrs. Mamie Bradley, mother of the victim, told the Courier that she wanted the people to see the corpse and to ''realize the threat to Negroes in the Deep south and to what extent the fiendish mobs would go to display their unbridled hate.''
Mrs. Bradley had insisted that the casket be opened when it arrived in Chicago, although it had been sealed when it left Mississippi.
Young Till, a victim of polio who stuttered, had been kidnapped at gunpoint from the home of an uncle in Money, Miss. by two white men. He was later discovered, dead, body floating feet upward in the Tallahatchie River, ten miles from his uncle’s home. The top of young Till’s head had been smashed in. A bullet had entered his skull slightly above one ear. His body had been weighted down with a 150 pound blower from a cotton gin and tied to the heavy weight with barbed wire.
Dr. Dubois Dead at 95
ACCRA, Ghana - Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, eminent scholar and statesman, died here Tuesday night. The Government of Ghana in making the announcement, gave no cause of death.
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