An Equal Justice Initiative monument in Montgomery says Money. Ask most people where Till died and they’ll say Money, Mississippi, the town where Till whistled at Bryant’s wife outside the family’s store. Because the defendants couldn’t be tried again, they got paid to make a confession to a national magazine-a heavily fictionalized account stage-managed by their lawyers-and Leslie Milam and his barn were written out of the story.
In 1955 an all-white, all-male jury, encouraged by the defense to do their duty as “Anglo-Saxons,” acquitted J. He lived in an old white farmhouse a few dozen steps from the barn, next to where Jeff Andrews’s house now stands. Another half brother, Leslie Milam, was there that night too. Most historians think at least seven were present. No one knows, for instance, how many people were involved. Read: How The Blood of Emmett Till still stains America todayīut the way Till’s name exists in the firmament of American history stands in opposition to the gaps in what we know about his killing. Almost 60 years later, after Trayvon Martin was killed, Oprah Winfrey channeled the thoughts of many Americans in evoking the memory and the warning of Emmett Till. Three months after his murder, Rosa Parks kept her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, and she later told Mamie Till that she’d been thinking of Emmett when she refused to move. His mother’s decision to show his body in an open casket, to allow Jet magazine to publish photos-“Let the world see what I’ve seen,” she said-became a call to action. “That right there is where he was hung at.”Įmmett Till was killed early on the morning of August 28, 1955, one month and three days after his 14th birthday. The truth is, nobody knows exactly what happened in the barn, and any evidence is long gone. Andrews thinks he was strung from the ceiling, to make the beating easier. Dirt covered the spot where Till was beaten, and where investigators believe he was killed.
Within reach sat a lawn mower and a Johnson 9.9-horsepower outboard motor. Christmas decorations leaned against one wall. Our eyes adjusted to the darkness of the barn where Emmett Till was tortured by a group of grown men. Jeff Andrews rolled up the garage door he’d installed. Its walls are made of cypress boards, weathered gray, and it overlooks a swimming pool behind a white columned house. The gravel crunched under his feet as he walked to the barn, which is long and narrow with sliding doors in the middle. He got out of his truck still wearing his scrubs and, with a smile, extended his hand: “Jeff Andrews.”
His tires kicked up dust when he turned off Drew Ruleville Road and headed across the bayou toward his house. T he dentist was a few minutes late, so I waited by the barn, listening to a northern mockingbird in the cypress trees. This article was published online on July 22, 2021.
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