American Experience Encore: The Murder of Emmett Till

Nearly 70 years after Emmett Till’s murder, newly discovered evidence renewed calls for justice

• Christina Zeiders
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  Christina Zeiders is the Communications Specialist at WITF. She helps get the word out about all of WITF's programs, events and community conversations.

In August 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy allegedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi.

Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn’t understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South – and it would cost him his life. Three days later, on August 28, two white men dragged him from his bed in the middle of the night, beat him brutally, and then shot him in the head.

Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both quickly acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury.

Shortly after their acquittal, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they killed Emmett, to a journalist.

The murder and trial horrified the nation and the world and helped mobilize the Civil Rights movement. Three months after his mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

The film, directed by Stanley Nelson, uncovered new eyewitnesses to the crime and helped prompt the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen the case. The film originally premiered in October 2020.

Watch the encore of American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till Tuesday, August 23 at 9pm on WITF TV or through the livestream on the PBS Video app.

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