In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was visiting family in Money, Mississippi, when he and his cousin Curtis Jones went to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market with some local boys to buy candy. Accounts of what happened next are still disputed, but some versions claim that Till whistled at 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, who owned the store with her husband, Roy Bryant, 24. Carolyn Bryant later testified that Till grabbed her hand and asked for a date. In 2008, however, historian Timothy Tyson said that Carolyn admitted to him that her testimony regarding Till’s verbal and physical advances was false. Till’s cousin Simeon Wright, as well as a second anonymous source, claimed that while Till spoke to Carolyn, he did not make any inappropriate comments, and he paid for his items and promptly left the store.
When Till and the other boys exited the store, Carolyn retrieved a pistol from her car. Though the teenagers left the premises upon seeing this, word of the incident spread quickly, and Roy Bryant soon caught wind of what happened. Immediately seeking revenge, he questioned several young Black men who came to his store. After Bryant learned where Till was staying, he was overheard talking to John William “J.W.” Milam, his half-brother, about abducting Till.
Roy, Carolyn and Milam took Till from his great-uncle’s home in the early morning hours of August 28, 1955, and tied him up in the back of a pickup truck. After dropping off Carolyn and picking up two Black men who worked for Roy, the men took Till to a barn in Drew, Mississippi, where they badly beat him. Till was also shot before the men threw his body into the Tallahatchie River, weighed down with a large fan blade they’d stolen from a cotton gin.
Three days later, two boys fishing in the river discovered Till’s nude and badly disfigured body. Till had been shot above his right ear, and his face had been beaten beyond recognition. The fan blade was secured around Till’s neck with barbed wire.