what happened to emmett till

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her familys grocery store. Till was visiting family in Mississippi when he went to the Bryant store with his cousins and may have whistled at Carolyn Bryant. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, kidnapped and brutally murdered Till, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River. The newspaper coverage and murder trial galvanized a generation of young African Americans to join the Civil Rights Movement out of fear that such an incident could happen to friends, family, or even themselves. Although Bryant and Milam were acquitted of the murder by an all-white, all-male jury, they later confessed and told a magazine journalist all the grisly details of their crime. No one else was ever indicted or prosecuted for involvement in the kidnapping or murder. In May 2004, the FBI reopened the investigation to determine if other individuals were involved, working with the Mississippi District Attorney, U.S. Attorney, federal attorneys, and local law enforcement. Tills body was exhumed for an autopsy in 2005. Although justice has not been served in the case, the tragic murder helped galvanize the growing civil rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and beyond.