Mamie Till-Mobley

Mamie Till-Mobley (born November 23, 1921, near Webb, Mississippi, U.S.—died January 6, 2003, Chicago, Illinois) was an American educator and activist who helped galvanize the emerging civil rights movement after her son, Emmett Till, was murdered in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white grocery store clerk in Mississippi.

Early life and marriage to Louis Till

Mamie Carthan was born in rural Mississippi, the only child of Alma Carthan and John Carthan. Wanting to leave the South and its Jim Crow laws, the family became part of the Great Migration north. In 1922 John Carthan moved to Argo, Illinois, where he began working for the Corn Products Refining Company. Two years later Mamie Carthan and her mother joined him. Encouraged by her parents, Mamie Carthan focused on school, especially after the couple divorced when she was 13 years old. A gifted student, she became the fourth African American to graduate from Argo Community High School, which was predominately white.

When she was 18, Carthan met Louis Till, who worked for Corn Products Refining. Her parents disapproved of him, and Carthan eventually broke it off at the urging of her mother. However, the couple ultimately reconciled, and they married in October 1940. The following year Emmett Louis Till, their only child, was born in Chicago. In 1942 the couple separated, and Mamie Till later obtained a restraining order after a violent domestic incident. After repeatedly violating the order, Louis Till enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943 to avoid jail. Two years later, while stationed in Italy, he was hanged for “willful misconduct.” Although Mamie Till was unable to obtain additional information, a Mississippi senator revealed shortly before the trial of her son’s killers that Louis Till had been executed for allegedly murdering a woman and raping two others. However, serious questions were later raised about his conviction.

Death and funeral of Emmett Till

Mamie Till eventually settled with her son in a middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. In the early 1950s she married Lemorris (“Pink”) Bradley, but they divorced after two years. In 1955 she planned a summer trip to Nebraska. Rather than join her, however, 14-year-old Emmett Till asked to spend the summer with relatives in Mississippi. At first she refused, worried that her easygoing son was unprepared for the treatment of Blacks in the South. As she later wrote, “How do you give a crash course in hatred to a boy who has only ever known love?” However, she finally relented, and Emmett Till boarded a train to Money, Mississippi, on August 20, 1955, arriving the following day. On August 24 he and several other teens went to the local grocery store. It was reported that Till then whistled at, touched the hand or waist of, or flirted with the store’s cashier, a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. In the early morning hours of August 28, the cashier’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, abducted Till from the house where he was staying. The two men beat and fatally shot the teenager before throwing him in the nearby river.

Told that her son had been kidnapped, Mamie Till sought help from Chicago reporters and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As her story spread, others became involved, including politicians in Illinois. On August 31, 1955, Emmett Till’s mutilated body was discovered, his face unrecognizable. He was identified by a monogrammed ring that had belonged to his father. Mississippi officials planned a hasty burial, but Mamie Till demanded that her son be returned to Chicago. Local law enforcement ultimately released the body on the condition that the casket remain closed. However, after the casket arrived in Chicago on September 2, Mamie Till insisted that it be opened and was shocked by her son’s disfigured corpse. Believing that “the whole nation had to bear witness to this,” Mamie Till held an open-casket funeral, and an estimated 50,000–100,000 people saw firsthand the brutality that had been inflicted on her son. In addition, she permitted photographs to be taken of his body, and they appeared in Jet magazine, the Chicago Defender, and numerous other media outlets.

In September 1955 an all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam. A grand jury subsequently opted not to indict the men on kidnapping charges. Protected by double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam admitted to killing Emmett Till in an interview with Look magazine that was published in January 1956.

Activism and later life

Mamie Till’s handling of her son’s funeral helped make racial injustice a national issue and encouraged others to take action. In December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white man, later saying that she had been motivated by Emmett Till. Throughout her life, Mamie Till sought justice for her son. She gave speeches across the country and helped raise money for the NAACP. Her work proved crucial to the burgeoning civil rights movement. It also inspired the Emmett Till Antilynching Act (2022), which made lynching a hate crime. Despite her efforts, however, no one was ever held accountable for Emmett Till’s murder. In 2017 Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted to lying under oath during her first husband’s murder trial, falsely stating that Emmett Till had touched her and used crude language. However, she was never prosecuted.

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In 1957 Mamie Till married Gene Mobley and took the name Mamie Till-Mobley. She earned a degree from the Chicago Teachers College (later Chicago State University) in 1960, and that year she began teaching elementary school. In 1976 she graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a master’s degree in administration. Till-Mobley’s memoir, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (written with Christopher Benson), was published posthumously in 2003. She was later the subject of the biopic Till (2022).