Mamie Till-Mobley flew into the public spotlight in 1955 because she was the mother of a 14-year-old African-American boy murdered after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. At her funeral on Saturday, it became clear that many also consider her to be the mother of a movement.
Elected officials, civil rights leaders and activists crowded into the Apostolic Church of God, 6320 S. Dorchester Ave., delivering rousing tributes to the woman they credit with opening their eyes and inspiring them to act. Many are dedicated to a reinvestigation of her son’s murder. Till-Mobley’s actions “transformed a people and changed the course of a nation,” Rev. Jesse Jackson said during her funeral.
After years of traveling the country trying to sustain her son’s memory, Till-Mobley, 81, died Monday at a time when renewed attention is being paid to the case in the form of books and documentaries. After the services Saturday, Kansas City activist Alvin Sykes announced the formation of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign with the goal of reopening the decades-old murder case.
He said a documentary filmmaker had found witness accounts and other research that suggest people other than the two white men who were acquitted in the case were involved.
For years the Emmett Till story went something like this: A 14-year-old Chicago boy was sent to the tiny delta town of Money, Miss., to visit relatives for the summer. His mother warned him about Jim Crow laws and race relations in the South. A little cocky and naive, the boy whistled at a white woman in a country store. Days later, the woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, the storeowner, and his friend J.W. Milam were thought to have plucked the boy from his uncle’s house in the middle of the night, tortured him and killed him.
His mutilated body eventually turned up in the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a fan from a cotton gin.
Till-Mobley’s decision to have an open-casket ceremony to let the world see her son’s horribly disfigured body outraged a nation and helped spark the civil rights movement.
On Saturday, many black activists testified to her strength. Rosa Parks sent her assistant to deliver a message to the crowd: “My dear friend, Mamie Till-Mobley, I thank you for your bravery and courage to share your only child with the world.”
“The news of the crime caused many people to participate in the cry for justice and equal rights, including myself,” Parks wrote in the statement. “The respect I have felt for you since 1955 will always live with me.”
Members of the Emmett Till Players, a group founded by Till-Mobley, delivered tearful but triumphant recitations of excerpts from the sermons of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Afterward, Sykes said he was spurred to action by a newspaper story that told of Keith Beauchamp’s unfinished documentary “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till.”
Beauchamp said that in pursuing the documentary he interviewed several people who witnessed various stages of the murder and coverup who didn’t testify at the trial. The list includes Emmett’s cousin, then 12, who was in the same bed as Emmett the night he was abducted.
“It took three years for him to talk to me,” said Beauchamp, 31, a Brooklyn filmmaker who started the project six years ago. “He was upset about history’s telling of the story. He said they had it all wrong.”
The cousin then persuaded others to tell what they knew.
One witness in the documentary said there was a caravan of cars that night instead of just one pickup truck outside the uncle’s house.
“I have a witness who said at least three white men with guns and flashlights, and two black men who were forced to participate, came to the house,” Beauchamp said. “The black men were employees of the white men. A witness said she remembered seeing one of the black men run around to the back of the house and two of the white men go to the front.”
He said the cousin recognized two of the men, including Bryant.
Another witness Beauchamp interviewed said he was on his way to the store about 6 a.m. and recalled seeing a pickup truck pulling off a gravel road near the Milam property. He said he saw four white men and three black men, one of whom was Emmett.
“On his way back from the store he heard screams and hollers coming from a nearby barn,” Beauchamp said. “He walked over to a well near the barn and J.W. Milam came out and asked him, patting a gun on his side, `Did you see or hear anything?'”
Beauchamp said he also interviewed someone who saw one of the men washing blood from the truck. The witness was told the blood was that of a slaughtered deer.
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The Mississippi attorney general’s office has said the new information, if true, could lead to a reopening of the investigation.
“We were hoping Ms. Mobley would be with us for this leg of the journey,” said Sykes, whose group is joined by other national organizations. “But we vow to keep it going because we know she wanted justice and justice was woefully denied.”
Mississippi has successfully prosecuted at least two 1960s high-profile race cases in the last decade, Sykes said his group won’t just blindly turn over documents and other pertinent information.
“We will look at the value of the evidence and present it to both the state and the U.S. Department of Justice. We also want to come up with our own theories as to a potential method of prosecution,” Sykes said.
He said it is a case in which the justice system failed the people of Mississippi and all Americans.
“Within 30 days, a young boy was killed and then the men accused were indicted and then acquitted,” he said. “All in 30 days.”
Sykes said that, in the article that galvanized the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, Till-Mobley mentioned she had tried for decades to get her son’s murder case reopened.
After reading the article, he immediately called Mobley, he said, and they later met to discuss the campaign.
He said the books and documentaries–including “The Murder of Emmett Till,” directed by Stanley Nelson and scheduled to air Jan. 20 on PBS–will help keep the focus on the case.
“Now with Ms. Mobley gone, this is like passing the torch in the pursuit of justice,” Sykes said. “We feel more compelled to go forward to the end so that there’s a credible and just resolution to Emmett’s story.”