Emmett Till’s Family Opposes Autopsy

(via Professor Kim.)

Quote of note: We don't think it will bring any new evidence. Mississippi officials should do what's right by interviewing the people who know about Till's murder and redress the past inequity of this case.

The Justice Department announced its plans to exhume Emmett Till's body on Tuesday. In today's Chicago Defender, Bertha Thomas, a cousin and president of the Emmett Till Foundation, says that she and other family members learned of the FBI's plans through news outlets. Thomas also said:

Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, never asked for an autopsy prior to her death in 2003.

She was a quiet soul and was not vindictive.  She just wanted an apology from the state of Mississippi before she died, Thomas said.

Thomas and some family members are at odds about whether the exhumation is necessary and what it would reveal.

Simeon Wright and Wheeler Parker were with Emmett when he was taken, and they feel there should be an autopsy, she said.  But they're the only ones, to my knowledge, who feel this way.  My uncle, who's the executor of Mamie's estate, disagrees with them, too.

This goes right to the heart of the questions I've been asking about how Civil Rights era murder cases are pursued and to what end. Justice in this case means identifying and prosecuting the murderers and acknowledging Mississippi's role in harboring them.

Two men, storeowner Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, were charged and acquitted of the murder. They bragged about the crime three months later in a Look magazine article.

The state (of Mississippi) and the FBI allowed sanctuaries for these racial terrorists and other who helped kill Emmett Till, Jackson said. We want to know who these people are.  We do not want a grandstanding event on the remains of Emmett Till.

It is perverse that the Department of Justice is looking to Emmett Till himself to resolve questions of responsibility for state sanctioned racial murders of the past. Clearly the place to start is living suspects and witnesses and those that shielded them from justice in the past.

Further reading on Emmett Till (via Civil Rights Movement Veterans):
• Lynching of Emmett Till (In Search of Heroes)
• Murder of Emmett Till (American Experience, PBS)
• Murder of Emmett Till (African American History)
• They Stand Accused James Hicks (Cleveland Call)
• Death of Emmett Till (Bob Dylan song)