US releases Emmett Till investigation records ahead of 70th anniversary of his killing

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FILE - This undated photo shows Emmett Louis Till, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955 after witnesses claimed he whistled at a white woman working in a store. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Emmett Till's photo is seen on his grave marker in Alsip, Ill., May 4, 2005. (Robert A. Davis/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File) — FILE - This undated photo shows Emmett Louis Till, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955 after witnesses claimed he whistled at a white woman working in a store. (AP Photo, File)

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6:59 PM on Friday, August 22

By GRAHAM LEE BREWER

Just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of his killing, the federal government made public thousands of pages of records Friday on the lynching of Emmett Till.

The records in the National Archives, released by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, detail how the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights responded to the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Till. The records were released in accordance with the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018.

“Our thoughts are with the Till family,” the National Archives and Records Administration said in a news release.

The Chicago teenager was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman at a grocery store in rural Mississippi. Four days later, Till was abducted from a great-uncle’s home in the predawn hours by Roy Bryant and John William “J. W.” Milam. The white men tortured and killed Till in a barn in a neighboring county, and his body was later found in the Tallahatchie River.

Bryant and Milam were charged with murder in Till's death but were acquitted by an all-white-male jury. Bryant and Milam later confessed to a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till.

His killing galvanized the Civil Rights Movement after Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket so that the country could see the brutality. In 2022, President Joe Biden signed a bill named for Till that made lynching a federal hate crime. And in 2023, Biden signed a proclamation establishing a national monument honoring Till and his mother.

Many of the records have never been seen by the public. They include reports, telegrams, case files and correspondences and documents from the NAACP, the White House, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, among others.

The records can be viewed in the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection on the National Archives and Records Administration website.

A member of the Till family did not immediately return a request for comment.