Eyewitness to kidnapping of Emmett Till hasn’t closed his eyes to quest for racial justice

LAWRENCE — Black teenagers Wheeler Parker and Emmett Till were on vacation from Chicago when they stepped into the white-owned Mississippi Delta grocery store operated by Roy and Carolyn Bryant to buy candy in the summer of 1955.

In a region saturated with influences of the Ku Klux Klan and in rural towns organized around brutal realities of the Jim Crow era, Till and Parker made their purchases at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Parker, 16 at the time, said Carolyn Bryant followed them out of the store, apparently to retrieve something from a car. It was at that moment on Aug. 24, Parker said, 14-year-old Till did what no Black male should have done in the presence of a white female given strict codes of conduct dictating social interaction in the South.

“Emmett, of course, did the wolf whistle,” Parker said during a visit Wednesday to exhibitions of civil rights artwork and history in Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. “We knew the mores of the South. We knew the people of the South. When he whistled, we just all made a beeline for the car. Nobody said, ‘Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.’ We just made a beeline for the car.”

Their car sped down gravel and dirt roads toward potential safety in the home of relatives near Money, Mississippi. Parker said they worried about retaliation for crossing a line with playful whistling, which could be interpreted as a forbidden public expression of affection for a white woman. Nothing happened until early morning Aug. 28.

Roy Bryant and his half brother, John William Milam, were at the shack, armed with a handgun and demanding to speak to the ill-mannered boys from Chicago. Parker and Till, best friends and cousins, were terrified.

“I said, ‘God, I’m getting ready to die. These men are going to kill us,’ ” Parker said. “I closed my eyes to die.”

Wheeler, the last surviving witness to the kidnapping of Till, said the prankster kid with a speech impediment and the nickname Bobo went peacefully with the two men. They loaded him into the back of a truck and disappeared into the night.

“That’s the last time I saw him alive,” said Wheeler, who went on to a life as a minister and author. “You don’t want to ever experience anything like that in your life. You feel so helpless.”

Tortured injustice

Milam and Bryant, perhaps with assistance, took Till to a shed where he was beaten, tortured and shot. He was tossed into the Tallahatchie River with a heavy weight tied with barbed wire around his neck. His body was found after three days in the water.

Till was a direct casualty of a social caste system that relied on barbarism and intimidation to reinforce racism. He posthumously became a civil rights icon as his death exposed for the nation the limitations of U.S. democracy and justice.

The grimness of the crime was amplified when his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket funeral in Chicago on Sept. 3, 1955. He was barely recognizable given his decomposed body and disfigured face. Photographs of his condition were published in newspapers and magazines, giving the tragedy an international audience. Those images exposed in black-and-white the vulnerability of Americans to prejudice.

“Let the world see what they did to my boy,” the grieving mother said.

What they saw contrasted with Mississippi courthouse images of the subsequent murder trial and decision by an all-white, all-male jury to find Bryant and Milam not guilty of Till’s murder. In 1956, no longer fearing prosecution, both men confessed in a Look magazine story.

Over the next 30 years, Parker said, public interest faded in terms of exploring and reckoning with Till’s slaying. That began to change in the 1980s, he said.

Parker, 85, has made an effort to speak publicly about circumstances of Till’s death and how the United States could work toward improving race relations. Talking about Till, however, wasn’t easy.

“Emmett Till’s story is not a pleasant story. It’s not a pretty story, but it has to be told,” he said. “It must be told because we need to know the truth. Sometimes I go right back there and I start crying. You tell the story and you start wondering how could that have happened? How could people be like that?”

Bullets and the signs

Parker was on the KU campus for a public event at the Spencer Museum tied to the traveling exhibition, “Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley: Let the World See.” It will be at KU until May 19.

Dave Tell, a communication studies professor at KU, helped launch the Emmett Till Memory Project in 2019. It’s an app highlighting locations associated with Till’s murder, including vandalized signs identifying the Tallahatchie River location where Till’s body was recovered.

“The first sign was stolen, thrown in the river and never recovered,” Tell said. “The second was filled with 317 bullet holes and eventually went to the Smithsonian. The third is here. The fourth — still standing — is bulletproof.”

Tell served as a consultant for the design and content of the “Let the World See” exhibition, which was developed in consultation with the Till family. It has been presented at the National Civil Rights Museum, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

“We don’t just learn what happened in 1955. We also learn how hard it has been to tell the story of what happened in 1955,” he said.

‘Come a long way’

The Spencer Museum also hosted a companion exhibit, “One History, Two Versions,” with artwork by contemporary Black artists exploring racial violence and justice movements. The artwork served to elaborate on themes raised in the Till exhibit and is expected to remain until June 16, said Sydney Pursel, Spencer Museum curator for public practice.

“The artwork is big, bold, colorful and expands on themes of Emmett and Mamie’s story, like the love between a mother and her children, or how media representation and activism have evolved over time, while also recognizing that more work is needed in the fight for racial justice,” she said.

Parker said the intersection of art and history, including the river marker with 10 bullet wounds, offered insight into the plague of racism in America.

“Bullet holes in a sign tell a story,” the minister said. “It speaks volumes. It reminds you of where you’re at. How much work we have to do.”

He said the world of 1955 no longer existed, because law enforcement officers, juries, judges and prosecutors as well as the broader public had less tolerance for racially motivated crime.

“There was a whole different atmosphere, a whole different attitude. We’ve come a long way,” said Parker, who has preached reconciliation. “I often think about the price Emmett paid. We can’t afford the luxury of hate.”