This essay contains a description of a lynching.
When 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by brothers Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam in 1955 Mississippi, Jim Crow was alive and well in the American South. For years, I thought the only motive for Emmett's brutal murder was anti-Blackness. But while working on the exhibit Reckoning with Remembrance: History, Injustice, and the Murder of Emmett Till with the Center of Restorative History at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, I learned how ideas about masculinity also drove this tragic event.
As part of my internship with the Center for Restorative History, I have developed programming for boys and men that examines how toxic masculinity—the harm that men do to themselves and others—is a major contributor to violent expression in society. When I started my internship, I didn't anticipate that the tragic murder of Emmett Till would become helpful in tackling the destructive effects of toxic masculinity. The historic photographs from the trial for Emmett Till's murder in 1955 enable me to use visual aids to combat the violence and destructive effects of toxic masculinity today. In my programming, I draw inspiration from Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, who dedicated her life to ensuring that Emmett's legacy be a call to action.
On August 24, 1955, at Bryant's Grocery in Money, Mississippi, Emmett Till and his cousins went into the store to buy candy. Witnesses say that Emmett whistled at Carolyn Bryant as he left the store. When Carolyn's husband heard what had happened, he called up his brother and the two went to Mose Wright's house, where Emmett was staying. They abducted Emmett at gunpoint, brutally beat him, then shot him in the head. Afterwards, they took Emmett's body to the Tallahatchie River, tied a cotton gin fan around his neck, and threw his body in the river. On August 31, 1955, a teenage boy found Emmett. Bryant and Milam were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. After five days of testimony before an all-white and all-male jury in Sumner, Mississippi, the jury deliberated for only 67 minutes before finding the men "not guilty."
In the South, white manhood was especially linked to the protection of white women, and any perceived threat could be met with violence, including lynching. If white men didn't violently retaliate against Black men accused of "disrespecting" white women, they would be seen as cowards. In 1956, Look magazine journalist William Bradford Huie wrote that Roy Bryant was worried about being seen by the white community as a coward if he did nothing to Emmett Till when faced with allegations that the boy had harassed his wife. In his 2024 book, The Barn, writer and Mississippi native Wright Thompson suggests that Milam and Bryant also feared a loss of power over Black people in Money, MS, a community that had come to "expect violence from white men like Milam, and to judge them cowards if they weren't capable of administering it."