While African Americans had heard about many previous lynchings, the murder of Emmett Till was an unforgettable event, a horror etched in black memory forever. He was so young; only fourteen—just a child from Chicago, not really aware of the etiquette of Jim Crow culture in Mississippi and what it could mean if he failed to observe the “ways of white folk.” Although blacks followed the trial closely, they knew that the two white men directly responsible for the shameful act, J.W. Milan and Roy Bryant, would never see a day in jail, even though they admitted in court to the federal crime of
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