Emmett Till Quotes

“Kellum reminded the jury that special prosecutor Robert Smith, “a gentleman I don’t know,” would have the final argument, and that this was a powerful advantage. He then closed with a dramatic message that the jury’s verdict would have eternal consequences. I want you to think of the future. When your summons comes to cross the Great Divide, and, as you enter your father’s house—a home not made by hands but eternal in the heavens, you can look back to where your father’s feet have trod and see your good record written in the sands of time and, when you go down to your lonely silent tomb to a sleep that knows no dreams, I want you to hold in the palm of your hand a record of service to God and your fellow man. And the only way you can do that is to turn these boys loose.123”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Death of Innocence went”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“PBS series The American Experience,”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“the May 2002 release of the novel Mississippi Trial, 1955, written by Brigham Young University English professor Chris Crowe. Geared toward youth, the book was first picked up by the McComb County, Michigan, school district and currently is part of the curriculum in schools throughout the country.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, premiered on PBS.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Bob Dylan’s “Death of Emmett Till”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“The Murder and the Movement.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“In 2014, she moved back in temporarily with Lamar and his family, who have diligently cared for her during her suffering.147”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“In June 2010, Carolyn joined the social networking site Facebook, under the username “Granny Pike” (after her mother’s maiden name), which kept her actual identity hidden. In mid-2014, however, she was forced to close her account because strangers figured out who she was and began to harass her online. Five months after first joining Facebook, however, she both posed and answered the question as to what constitutes the real qualities in a man. Her answer was that he must be ethical and stand up for a good cause.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Lasting romantic love has eluded Carolyn, however. After her divorce from Roy Bryant in 1975, she remarried at least twice and had another relationship with a man (last name Wren), with whom she lived for a time. On November 21, 1984, she wed Greenville resident Griffin Chandler, an employee at US Gypsum. The marriage ended three and a half years later with Chandler’s death.144 The widowed Carolyn soon married again, this time to former Leland police officer David Donham.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Two months after Frank’s death, Carolyn put her home in Greenville up for sale and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to live with her surviving son, Lamar.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Perhaps Roy’s demons had concerned his mother because she had once endured similar abuses from her second husband, Henry Bryant.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“When Roy, Carolyn, and the two youngest children left Louisiana in 1973 and returned to Mississippi, they relocated to Ruleville, in Sunflower County. Roy went back into the grocery business by taking over a small store that had been run by family members. Son Frank, a football player at North Sunflower Academy, earned his high school diploma in 1975. Carol Ann began attending the Mississippi School for the Deaf in Jackson, but spent every other weekend and holidays at home. She graduated in 1979.125 At some point, Roy and Carolyn Bryant’s marriage developed serious problems, and it became unbearable for Carolyn.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Roy’s mother, Eula Bryant.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Carolyn gave birth to her third son, Frankie Lee.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“The simple obituary of J. W. Milam that appeared in 1980 escaped media attention. Roy Bryant’s death, which came in 1994, would have gone unnoticed as well had it not been for the astute eye of journalist Bill Minor. Minor published a piece that noted Bryant’s role in the Till case soon after the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and Bryant’s local paper, the Bolivar Commercial, each ran short, standard obituaries.117”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“The Milams later moved to Orange, Texas, but returned to Greenville after only a few years. On Easter Sunday, 1962, Juanita Milam and her five siblings hosted a fiftieth wedding anniversary dinner for her parents, Albert and Myrtle Thompson, at the Thompson home on Purcell Street. Myrtle died the following year while J. W. and Juanita were still living in Texas, but before Albert died in 1965, they returned to Mississippi to help care for him. They would make their home at 615 Purcell Street in Greenville, near the Thompsons, where J. W. would live out the rest of his life. The house was a converted black Methodist church.107”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“On December 27, 1970, Strider died of a heart attack while on a deer hunt in Issaqueena County; his body was shortly discovered by others.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Minor also recalled that once Strider was in the legislature, he was not the same man that the world saw in Sumner during the Till murder trial. Although he is remembered for regularly insulting the black journalists in the hot, crowded courtroom in Sumner, his election to the Senate after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 forced him to deal with a black constituency that finally had the power of the ballot. Yet Strider would have been happy to rid the Delta of its black citizens. In February 1966, he cosponsored a bill to relocate Mississippi blacks to other states, as a new farm bill was making it harder for laborers to earn a living. A proposed relocation commission would seek federal funds for the removal of those who wanted to go. “If they (Negro farm workers) feel like they are put upon or have to live in tents and opportunities are brighter somewhere else, we’ll be glad to get them there,” said Strider’s cosponsor, Senator Robert Crook of Ruleville.96 Nothing ever came of the proposal, however.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“In July 1968, Strider admitted on the floor of the Mississippi Senate that he had paid for votes during his 1951 campaign for Tallahatchie County sheriff. Strider disclosed this as the Senate debated a bill that provided for absentee voting for teachers and students. “In those days you didn’t win elections, you bought them,” he told his colleagues. He said that he paid out a total of $30,000 for blank absentee ballots reserved for people who had indicated they would not be present on Election Day. Reporter Bill Minor, who knew the former sheriff, said years later that Strider had paid $25 to each of those willing to cast their ballot in his favor.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“In February 1965, Strider won a special election to the state senate, where he represented Grenada, Yalobusha, and Tallahatchie Counties for the next five years. In addition to his role with the Game and Fish Commission, he was a member of the Public Property, Transportation, and Water and Irrigation Committees, and chairman of the Penitentiaries Committee.94”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“PBS series Eyes on the Prize.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till, coauthored with journalist Herb Boyd.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Denver City Park, local officials unveiled a $110,000, twenty-foot statue designed and cast by Boulder artist Ed Rose. The idea for the sculpture came in 1973 by Herman Hamilton, a Denver bowling alley owner from Money, Mississippi, who was nine years old when Emmett Till was murdered. It depicted Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmett Till standing together. The project had been sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation, with a grant from the Colorado Centennial-Bicentennial Commission.14 Till’s August 28, 1955, murder and King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech occurred exactly eight years apart. Mamie”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“William Bradford Huie”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” published in the spring in both the Daily Defender and Chicago Defender”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“With Henry Lee Loggins holding the victim, the Milams led by J. W. began beating Emmett about the head with their pistols. He began to cry and beg for mercy. That only whetted their hatred. They smashed his head in, beat it to a pulp. Emmett fell to the floor, still crying and begging. Their frenzy increased. The blows fell faster. The frenzy mounted higher. The killers kicked and beat their victim. Finally the cries died down to a moan and then ceased. The Milams and Bryant thought their victim was dead. A new panic seized them. What to do with the body? J. W. rose to the occasion: throw the body in the Tallahatchie river.87 As”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“Dixon says that the white men in the front of the truck with J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant were Leslie Milam “and another brother who has never been completely identified.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

“The articles were written by a journalist under the pseudonym Amos Dixon. An introductory note in the first installment described Dixon as a white southerner who had covered the murder trial in Sumner and “talked freely to those who knew what happened.”79 Unlike Huie, Dixon maintained that Milam and Bryant had accomplices, and he names them. His account aligns more closely with the testimonies of Willie Reed, Mandy Bradley, and Add Reed, which “Shocking Story” ignored completely. Midway through publication of the series, a thirty-five-page booklet appeared, titled Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till, and it told a similar story as Dixon had provided. It was written by Olive Arnold Adams, wife of New York Age Defender publisher Julius Adams. A seven-page chapter dealt specifically with the Till case.80 Dr.”
― Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement