U.S. releases Emmett Till investigation records ahead of 70th anniversary of his killing

Just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of his killing, the federal government made public thousands of pages of records Friday on the lynching of Emmett Till

Just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of his killing, the federal government made public thousands of pages of records Friday on the lynching of Emmett Till.

The records in the National Archives, released by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, detail how the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights responded to the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Till. The records were released in accordance with the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018.

“Our thoughts are with the Till family,” the National Archives and Records Administration said in a news release.

Emmett Till.AP fileThe Chicago teenager was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman at a grocery store in rural Mississippi. Four days later, Till was abducted from a great-uncle’s home in the predawn hours by Roy Bryant and John William “J. W.” Milam. The white men tortured and killed Till in a barn in a neighboring county, and his body was later found in the Tallahatchie River.

Bryant and Milam were charged with murder in Till’s death but were acquitted by an all-white-male jury. Bryant and Milam later confessed to a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till.