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A more plausible explanation

It's conceivable that Mamie Till Bradley planned to use a $400 life insurance settlement to recover the costs of hiring hit men to dispose of her incorrigible son, Emmett Till. The policy was written prior to Emmett being sent from Chicago to live (or die) in Mississippi.

Four-hundred dollars may not seem like much in today's economy ($4,420.46 inflation adjusted). But to sharecroppers in the poverty-stricken South of the 1950s, a few dollars for a night's work would be a welcomed windfall of easy money. A life insurance policy with a face value exceeding $400 would have raised suspicions.

Mamie would have had access to willing participants with her uncle Moses Wright orchestrating matters in Mississippi. 

Emmett's mom (born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan) was an intelligent, street-wise woman. Reportedly, she was the first black student to make the "A" Honor roll and fourth black student to graduate from the predominantly White Argo Community High School in  Summit, IL [source].

The motive

A motive? The disappearance of Emmett would have allowed the boy's mom to reconcile with her estranged second husband "Pink" Bradley or possibly find a new love interest and live a quiet and happy life far removed from the scene of the crime. Recall that Emmett Till brandished a butcher's knife while threatening the life of his step-father. "Pink" Bradley apparently took the threat serious enough to return to his home in Detroit. The couple divorced leaving Mamie alone with a 14-year-old boy whose prospects were no more promising than those of his real father, Louis Till, who had been executed for murder.

Emmett was obviously not the angelic child portrayed by Hollywood and Mamie's dream became a reality about two years of Emmett's death when she married Gene Mobley in 1957 and assumed the name Mamie Till-Mobely.  

Years earlier, Mamie's divorced parents strongly opposed her relationship with Louis Till. Their opinion of their incorrigible grandson, Emmett, would likely have been no different; a near-carbon copy of Louis, the man they despised. Mamie doubtless realized that her parent's foresight was prophetic. 

Kidnapping and murder

Enter her uncle, Moses Wright.

Uncle Moses showed up at Mamie's Chicago apartment having made the journey from his cabin in Money, Mississippi. We can only guess that Mamie covered the cost of her sharecropper uncle's journey. He returned home with Emmett in tow. The fact that Emmett's apparent demise occurred within days after his arrival in Mississippi lends credibility to this hypothesis. What's more, Moses and his wife, Elizabeth, were hardly positioned to feed the rapacious appetite of a 14-year-old boy nor tolerate his inveterate irascibility. Why wait?

Moses offered no resistance when two men kidnapped Emmett from his cabin. Reportedly, the kidnappers obscured their identities by shining lights in Moses's eyes. That sounds absurd. And there was no evidence that the kidnappers wore masks or hoods. Why not? It seems likely that the kidnappers were convinced that Moses would not disclose their identities to authorities, as if he were part of the plot. Moses even testified that he recognized J.W. Milam behind the glaring lights, possibly throwing authorities off the scent of the actual kidnappers.

Nonetheless, Milam and half-brother Roy Bryant were indicted for Till's murder.

Literally overkill

Apologists for Emmett Till claim he was kidnapped and murdered for merely whistling at Bryant's wife. It's doubtful that farmer Milam would risk offending Black sharecroppers upon whom he relied for his livelihood over an innocent whistle. Likewise, Bryant depended on Black sharecroppers who patronized his grocery for his livelihood.

The kidnapping story would have expunged Moses of culpability and, with Mamie in Chicago, she, too, would not be linked to the murder.

Witnesses claim they later saw two Black men pistol-whipping Till in the back of a passing pick-up truck. Why would Black men savagely beat a Black boy without cause and without remuneration? A swollen and disfigured body presumed to be Till was eventually found in the Tallahatchie River, apparently weighted down by a large fan blade that was fastened around the neck with barbed wire.

Brothers confess

That's not to say that Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were not willing participants. They may have been the two White men seen in the cab of the passing pick-up truck. Both told Look Magazine's William Huie that they killed Emmett. Were they paid for a bogus confession to increase the magazine's sales? Or were two cold-blooded murderers suddenly overwhelmed with a flush of integrity? 

Neither Bryant nor Milam were known to be men of means. Roy and his wife lived in a back room of the grocery that bore the Bryant name. They owned no vehicle; not even a television. An infusion of cash in exchange for a confession would seem a fair trade in exchange for the dim prospects of future employment such a confession would create. There seems to be no other rational explanation for their confession regardless of their guilt or innocence. (Bryant found work as a welder; Milam worked his farm.)

The final glitch

Mamie's alleged plot met a glitch when the body dredged from the Tallahatchie River was bloated, unrecognizable, and unidentifiable. Because it was nude, there was no clothing and no personal items to link it to Emmett. Reports say the coroner wasn't even certain that the remains were that of a Black person. What's more, Bryant and Milam were not convicted. How could Mamie collect a death benefit on an unidentifiable body? 

The solution seemed to be an open casket funeral. Ostensibly, the excuse would be to allow mourners to witness the severity of the murder. In reality, it appears that Mamie reasoned that countless mourners would attest to the "fact" that the body was, indeed, the remains of Emmett. And it probably was. "Probably" isn't good enough for insurance adjusters. But the testimony of hundreds of witnesses in a politically charged death would be more than enough to convince an insurance company to fork over four-hundred dollars.

Missing are photographs of the deceased Emmett Till. 

Image: Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam at their 1955 trial

[The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi, By William Bradford Huie, Look Magazine, January, 1956]

 

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