2,345 pages of FBI, White House, State of Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files, newspaper articles, and histories related to the murder of Emmett Till (1941-1955).

Emmett Louis Till traveled to Money, Mississippi in 1955, to spend the summer with his great uncle, Moses Wright, and his relatives. On August 24, 1955, Emmett, age 14, entered the Bryant Grocery & Meat Market in the town of Money. Till exited the store, and shortly thereafter the store owner's wife, Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, exited as well. Upon her exit, Till whistled. The relatives accompanying Emmett knew this whistle from a black male could cause trouble and they left with Till in haste.

On August 28, 1955, at approximately 2:30 a.m., Roy Bryant (the store owner) and his half-brother, J.W. Milam and at least one other person appeared at the house of Till's great uncle looking for the boy who had "done the talking" in Money and abducted the boy from the house. Bryant and Milam brutally beat Emmett Till, took him to the edge of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, fastened a large metal fan used for ginning cotton to his neck with barbed wire, and pushed his body into the river.

Collection highlights include:

WHITE HOUSE FILES

134 pages of Eisenhower Administration files concerning Emmett Till's death. Some material in this file was not declassified until 2005. The files show that the Justice Department and FBI arching concern about the Till case was its possible exploitation by communists.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF THE EMMETT TILL MURDER

FBI INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

A 110 page, February 9, 2006, FBI summary prosecutive report of the investigation concerning the Murder of Emmett Till, that was launched on May 7, 2004.

EMMETT TILL MURDER TRIAL COURT TRANSCRIPT

FBI FILE EXTRACTS

A memo shows the original bad information the FBI had about the Till kidnapping. A memo documents the FBI's decision not to intervene in the case. A memo covers Carolyn Bryant's testimony in the trial.

A CASE STUDY IN SOUTHERN JUSTICE: THE EMMETT TILL CASE

"A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case" by Hugh Stephen Whitaker. This paper completed in 1963, became the foundational study of the Emmett Till murder and trial. Whitaker's 218-page study used personal interviews conducted with jurors, members of law enforcement, lawyers, and other people involved with the Till trial. Including Sheriff H.C. Strider and Defense attorneys J.W. Kellum, J.J. Breland, and John W. Whitten. Interviewees suggest that two black men were purposefully hidden in a local Charleston, Mississippi, jail in order to limit the prosecution's case. The study deeply looks at social, economic, political, historical and racial aspects that brought Mississippi to where it was in 1955.

MISSISSIPPI STATE SOVEREIGMTY COMMISSION

768 pages of Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission files, dating from 1958 to 1972. They provide a strong view of race, politics, and law enforcement in Mississippi. The State Sovereignty Commission was the state's official counter civil rights agency from 1956 to 1977. It was created to monitor the activities of people who challenged Jim Crow segregation laws and those who attempted to expand the number of African-Americans voting in the state.

These files do not contain direct information regarding the Till murder, the Commission was formed the year after the murder of Emmett Till, but the subjects of many of the documents in this collection are individuals connected to the Till case.