The weapon used to kill Black teenager Emmett Till in one of the most notorious lynchings that helped ignite the civil rights movement is now on display 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 “the whole story” 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 an article in The Atlantic 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 Foundation for Mississippi History 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 statute of limitations and because they could not prove a key witness lied to federal investigators about her story.
Deborah Watts, Emmett’s cousin and the co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, 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 Chicago teen was visiting family in Money, Mississippi, in the summer of 1955 when he had his fateful encounter with Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was 21 at the time.
Accounts from that day differ but witnesses alleged Emmett whistled at Bryant Donham after purchasing some bubble gum from the store she owned with her then-husband.
Emmett was falsely accused of flirting and making advances at Bryant Donham.
Four days later, 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 Look Magazine, about four months after an all-White jury deliberated for under an hour before acquitting the two, despite eyewitnesses identifying the defendants 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 witnessed his cousin Emmett’s abduction, said displaying the murder weapon and holster is “good because it brings closure,” according to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
“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.”
To mark the 70th anniversary of Emmett’s kidnapping and murder, the Emmett Till Interpretative Center this past week held a multi-day commemoration program 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 President Donald Trump alleged 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 speak out against “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.”