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Article: A Wallet, a White Woman, and a Whistle: Fact and Fiction in Emmett Till's Encounter in Money, Mississippi
- Article from:
- Southern Quarterly
- Article date:
- July 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Southern Quarterly Summer 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Tragic events followed the arrival of Emmett "Bobo" Till at the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi on 24 August 1955. Four days later, Till, a fourteen year-old African American youth from Chicago, was kidnapped and murdered because he allegedly whistled at, or otherwise flirted with the woman behind the counter, twenty-one year-old Carolyn Bryant. Within a month, the woman's husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J. W. Milam, were tried and acquitted in a Tallahatchie County courtroom.
Emmett Till had just arrived in Mississippi four days earlier with a cousin, Wheeler Parker Jr. They had accompanied Till's uncle (and Parker's grandfather), Moses Wright, back to ...