Emmett Till abducted, murdered in Mississippi Delta

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – WLBT had been on the air for less than two years when a Black teenager visiting Mississippi from Chicago disappeared in the Delta.

Emmett Till, 14, was accused of flirting with a 21-year-old white woman named Carolyn Bryant.

It happened at her family’s grocery store in the Money community, about ten miles north of Greenwood, back in 1955.

A few nights later, that woman’s husband and his half-brother kidnapped Till from his uncle’s home.

They tortured and killed the teen, and eventually threw his mutilated body into the Tallahatchie River.

WLBT and news crews from across the country were at the courthouse in Sumner when an all-white jury acquitted the killers, who later sold their story to a national magazine admitting to the crime.

No one was ever convicted in the case.

Outrage over Till’s murder helped spark the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi and across the South.

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