It’s been 63 years since the death of Emmett Till and the Department of Justice has re-opened the investigation. In the U.S. Attorney General’s report to Congress on the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act of 2016, the Department said they found “new information.”
“The Department has re-opened In re Emmett Till, a case which had been listed as closed on prior Reports, after receiving new information,” the report states. “Because it is an active investigation, the Department cannot provide any additional information at this time.”
While the report does not say what the new information may be, a book was released back in 2017 titled The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson, in the book, Carol Bryant who accused Till of assaulting her said she fabricated parts of her testimony.
Till was a 14-year-old back teenager who was kidnapped from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi and killed after he wolf-whistled at a woman. Three days later, his mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River where he had been weighted down with a cotton gin fan.
“In September 1955, two local Mississippi men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were prosecuted for Till’s murder -18- by state authorities but were acquitted by a jury,” the report states. “Both men subsequently admitted to a journalist that they murdered Till. Milam and Bryant died in 1981 and 1994, respectively. In 2004, several interested parties requested that the Department consider whether it could prosecute any potential si1rviving subjects involved in Till’s murder. After reviewing the information available in 2004, the Department determined that there was no federal jurisdiction because the statute of limitations had run on any potential federal crime, thus barring federal prosecution. In 2007, the matter was referred to the District Attorney for the 4th Judicial District of Mississippi. A state grand jury declined to issue new charges.”
