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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
After being hidden away from public view, the gun used to kill Emmett
Till is now on display
By Rebekah Riess, CNN
Updated:
8:11 AM EDT, Sun August 31, 2025
Source: CNN
The weapon used to kill Black teenager in one of the most notorious
lynchings that helped ignite the civil rights movement is now at a
museum in the Deep South.
Emmett was just 14 when he was kidnapped from his great-uncle’s house
by two White men who later admitted to beating and torturing the teen
before shooting him in the head and throwing his body into the
Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a 75-pound cotton gin fan.
The .45-caliber pistol and worn saddle-brown holster, marked with the
initials J.M., are part of an exhibit at the state’s Two Mississippi
Museums – the interconnected Museum of Mississippi History and
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum – that aims to tell 70 years after
Emmett’s murder.
Emmett’s murder in the Jim Crow South, and his mother’s decision to
hold a public open-casket funeral where thousands saw Emmett’s
mangled body, sparked global outrage and accelerated the civil rights
movement in America.
Writer Wright Thompson, who wrote an account of Emmett’s death in his
book “The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi,”
said in he was tipped off about the gun and found it “sitting in a
safe-deposit box” in a Mississippi bank. CNN reached out to Thompson
for comment but did not immediately hear back. A spokesperson for the
Mississippi Department of Archives and History confirmed Thompson’s
account of the events.
The gun and its holster had been in the private ownership of a
Mississippi family “that is not connected to the case,” the
state’s Department of Archives and History said. The negotiated with
the family and was able to acquire the weapon and holster under the
condition that the family remain anonymous, Two Mississippi Museums
Director Michael Morris said.
“It wasn’t until earlier this year that I fully understood that he
(Emmettl) was shot,” Morris said at a news conference about the
artifacts on Thursday. “Most people know about the fact that he was
brutally beaten and tortured, but it’s important to know that he was
shot as well, and so that gun being on display is going to help us tell
that story.”
The weapon was authenticated through its serial number, which matches
information from FBI records, according to Morris. The FBI and the
Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division closed their
investigations into the infamous killing without filing federal
charges, due to the and because they could not prove a key witness
about her story.
Deborah Watts, Emmett’s cousin and the co-founder of the , said the
family is “wrestling with an intellectual and spiritual conundrum”
over the recovery and display of the gun.
“The gun that was used in Emmett’s heinous murder is in fact
evidence in a case that, while closed, is one in which we still seek
justice,” Watts said in a statement to CNN. But in the absence of
charges and with most people involved in the case now dead, the family
said the exhibit honoring Emmett has special bearing.
“We also understand the importance of the gun as an artifact for
education so that current and future generations are able to reflect
and grasp the importance in resisting erasure or the changing of
historical facts,” Watts said.
The savage murder
The was visiting family in Money, Mississippi, in the when he had his
fateful encounter with , who was 21 at the time.
but witnesses alleged Emmett at Bryant Donham after purchasing some
from the store she owned with her then-husband.
Emmett was of flirting and making advances at Bryant Donham.
, Bryant Donham’s husband at the time, Roy Bryant, and his
half-brother, J.W. Milam, rousted Emmett from his bed in the middle of
the night, ordered him into the bed of a pickup and eventually beat him
viciously before shooting him in the head.
Both the gun and the holster originally belonged to Milam, who along
with Bryant, admitted to the killing in a 1956 interview with , about
four months after an all-White jury an hour before acquitting the two,
despite and the men confessing to kidnapping the teen.
Morris said the Mississippi Department of Archives and History told
Emmett’s family that the artifacts would be on permanent display in a
theater where a narrative film describes what happened “from the
teen’s entry into Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market to his murder.”
Rev. Wheeler Parker, who , said displaying the murder weapon and
holster is “good because it brings closure,” according to the .
“This weapon has affected me more so than any other artifact that
I’ve encountered in my 30-year museum career,” said Nan Prince, the
director of collections for Mississippi’s Department of Archives and
History. “The emotions that are centered around it are hard. It’s a
hard thing to see and a hard thing to convey.”
Emmett’s legacy
To mark the 70th anniversary of Emmett’s kidnapping and murder, the
Emmett Till Interpretative Center this past week held a multi-day where
national and civil rights leaders met to reflect on “the life and
legacy of Emmett Till and advance the ongoing movement for racial
justice.”
Commemorative events included a train ride from Chicago to Mississippi
that echoed the one Emmett and his family took 70 years ago, “linking
together sites that are important to the Emmett Till tragedy.”
The new exhibit comes as museums across the country face increased
federal scrutiny, after museums were too focused on highlighting
negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery
was.”
That announcement prompted the American Alliance of Museums, which
represents 35,000 professionals in the sector, to “growing threats of
censorship against US museums.”
“These pressures can create a chilling effect across the entire
museum sector,” the group said.
When asked about the current national debates about how to teach
difficult history, Morris said his museum will continue doing public
history work.
“One of the reasons why the Civil Rights Museum was created is to
tell the unvarnished truth about what happened in terms of the civil
rights movement here in Mississippi, and that’s our mission,” he
said. “And I think the acquisition of this artifact is a part of our
mission, and so we’re just going to continue doing public history
work. And for us, you know, we’re just doing our jobs.”
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