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mahatmakanejeeves

(56,890 posts)
Sat Sep 9, 2017, 02:57 PM Sep 2017

Simeon Wright, Witness to Abduction of Emmett Till, Dies at 74

Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/fahrenthold

Simeon Wright, Witness to Abduction of Emmett Till, Dies at 74



Simeon Wright, Witness to Abduction of Emmett Till, Dies at 74

By SAM ROBERTS SEPT. 6, 2017

Simeon Wright picked cotton all day in his father’s field on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 1955, just as he had done every summer growing up in the Mississippi Delta. It was just too hot, though, for his 14-year-old citified cousin, Emmett Till.
....

That night, the boys sought refreshment with relatives and friends, all black, at Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money. Inside, Emmett bought some bubble gum from the 21-year-old white woman, Carolyn Bryant, who ran the store with her husband. It was a fateful encounter.
....

Simeon Wright was only 12 at the time. He was sharing his bed with Emmett the night of Aug. 27 when two white men — Carolyn Bryant’s husband, Roy, and his half brother, J. W. Milam — abducted Emmett at gunpoint. ... It was Simeon who identified Emmett’s ring for the police a few days later, after his cousin’s beaten body, one eye gouged out, had been fished from the Tallahatchie River, weighted down with a 75-pound cotton gin fan tethered to his neck with barbed wire.
....

Simeon Wright, who fled Mississippi with his parents and siblings after the not-guilty verdict, died on Monday in Countryside, Ill., a Chicago suburb. He was 74. His family said the cause was complications of bone cancer.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 7, 2017, on Page B16 of the New York edition with the headline: Simeon Wright, 74, Witness to His Cousin Emmett Till’s Abduction, Is Dead.
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Simeon Wright, Witness to Abduction of Emmett Till, Dies at 74 (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Sep 2017 OP
We should never forget what happened to Emmett Till still_one Sep 2017 #1
+ Several Zillion. Hoyt Sep 2017 #3
I cannot imagine having that legacy. May his people find peace. nolabear Sep 2017 #2
The Death of Emmett Till struggle4progress Sep 2017 #4
Here is the confederate monument outside the Tallahatchie county courthouse in Sumner struggle4progress Sep 2017 #5
and she is still alive . i would have no problem locking her up right now JI7 Sep 2017 #7
I still cry. raven mad Sep 2017 #6

struggle4progress

(118,039 posts)
5. Here is the confederate monument outside the Tallahatchie county courthouse in Sumner
Sat Sep 9, 2017, 04:03 PM
Sep 2017

where a jury in 1955 acquitted Bryant and Milam for the murder. Several months afterwards, in early 1956, Look magazine published their confessions. Carolyn (Bryant) Donham later admitted her testimony at the trial had been false

raven mad

(4,940 posts)
6. I still cry.
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 06:14 AM
Sep 2017

This book destroyed me. There are better ones, I guess more accurately written, since then. But this one? 2003, before Mamie Till Mobley died, sticks.

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