scholars have long relied on the confession of Milam and Bryant. Although William Bradford Huie’s ‘The shocking story of an approved killing,’ published in Look magazine in 1956, contradicted testimony of three witnesses at the murder trial, the confession was such a sensational account, and so widely read, that the killers’ version of events has been treated as definitive." Though the adoption of the Milam/Bryant confession was odd at the time, especially because the killers had lied not only about releasing Till but the timeline of events as they told it was almost impossible to make sense of, but it kept themselves safe, as well as white people 'safe' in the eyes of the colored population. The recent FBI investigative reports have proven the killer's testimony an undependable source. Eye witness accounts that previously would have proven them false but were overlooked do to racism that roared through our nation, proved that the murderers lied, but because newspapers where dominated by the white perspective, that's not what was considered true, or published until Jet Magazine's photos from the open casket funeral. "Footage of Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till, also emphasizes the strength of a woman who insisted that her son’s mutilated body be displayed in an open casket during his funeral and who traveled to Mississippi in order to observe the trial, despite death threats. As the narrator intones, ‘A few black people stood up to the system..."I felt this was a powerful example of the African American population, doing what they could at the time to show that this wasn't okay in any stretch of the imagination. It was one of the only ways, since anything that had to do with a colored perspective at the time was shut out of reports and courtrooms. "In a sound bite that still has the power to shock students, the heavyset Sheriff H. C. Strider provides his assessment of the lesson of Emmett Till:
‘We never have any trouble until some of our Southern niggers go up north, and the NAACP talks to them, and they come back home." What's even more shocking is the congratulatory manner in which Milan and Bryant were treated. The entry goes on to talk critically about the movies themselves, but I believe that it still made strong points of how African American were represented, or underrepresented in the media at this time, and also how the fight for equality began way before Rosa Parks didn't move from her seat on a bus. The colored community papers went to great length to report as much information as they could get, much of it coming after other publications and responses to what is being falsely stated about Emmett Till's murder.
Wagner, Terry. "America's
Civil Rights Revolution: Three Documentaries About Emmett Till'sMurder in
Mississippi (1955)." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television. 30.2 (2010): 187-201. Print.
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439681003779093
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