National Archives releases Emmett Till records

SUMMARY

• Federal government released thousands of pages on Emmett Till‘s 1955 lynching
• Records include Justice Department, FBI and Civil Rights Commission documents
• Release marks 70th anniversary of Till’s killing in Mississippi
• Collection available through the National Archives Civil Rights Cold Case portal

Just ahead of today’s 70th anniversary of his murder, the federal government released thousands of pages of records on the lynching of Emmett Till.

The records were released Friday, Aug. 22, in the National Archives by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board. They detail how the Justice Department, the FBI and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights responded to the 1955 killing of Till, 14. 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, he 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, all-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 her son’s brutalized body.

In 2022, then-President Joe Biden signed a bill named for Till that made lynching a federal hate crime. 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.

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 return a request for comment.

EXTERNAL LINKS

• National Archives Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection
• Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
• Text of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act