Gun Used In Emmett Till’s Lynching On Display In Civil Rights Museum

The gun used in the lynching of Emmett Till, which for years had been hidden, is currently on display in an exhibit at a Mississippi civil rights museum. 

According to CNN, the .45 caliber pistol is currently displayed as part of an exhibit at the state’s Two Mississippi Museums, which is comprised of the interconnected Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Writer Wright Thompson told The Atlantic he received a tip about the gun and found it “sitting in a safe-deposit box” at a Mississippi bank. The gun, along with its holster, had been in the private ownership of a family that wasn’t connected with the case, according to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The Department of Archives and History was able to obtain the gun after reaching an agreement allowing the family that possessed it to remain anonymous. The gun is displayed in a theater where a narrative film plays, describing everything that happened “from [Emmett Till’s] entry into Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market to his murder.”

“It wasn’t until earlier this year that I fully understood that he (Emmett Till) was shot,” Two Mississippi Museums Director Michael Morris said at a news conference about the artifacts. “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.”

“This weapon has affected me more so than any other artifact that I’ve encountered in my 30-year museum career,” Nan Prince, the director of collections for Mississippi’s Department of Archives and History, told CNN. “The emotions that are centered around it are hard. It’s a hard thing to see and a hard thing to convey.”

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy visiting family in Money, Mississippi, over the summer of 1955. Carolyn Bryant Donham accused Till of flirting and making aggressive passes at her when he bought some bubblegum at a store she owned with her then-husband, Roy Bryant. There have been varying accounts of the incident, though several eyewitnesses said Till simply whistled at Bryant Donham.

Four days after that encounter, Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, kidnapped Emmett Till from his bed in the middle of the night and forced him into the back of a pickup truck. 

The men brutally beat Till before shooting him, weighing him down with a 75-pound cotton gin fan, and throwing him into the Tallahatchie River. The gun belonged to Milam, who, along with Bryant, admitted to killing Emmett Till after an all-white jury found them not guilty of murder.

Emmett Till’s lynching was one of the inciting incidents of the Civil Rights movement after his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, decided to hold a public, open casket funeral to show the country what Bryant and Millam did to her son.

Emmett Till’s family understandably has complicated feelings about the gun being displayed in the museum. “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,” Deborah Watts, Emmett’s cousin and cofounder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, said in a statement to CNN. 

“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 added.

Watts’ point about “resisting the erasure or changing of historical facts” is especially poignant as President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked national museums for focusing on “how bad slavery was.” One of Trump’s first executive orders launched a review into Smithsonian museums to make sure they didn’t have any “improper ideology.”

At a time when power wishes to whitewash the past, we must hold on to the truth. No matter how painful and heinous it may be. 

SEE ALSO:

Emmett Till National Monument Could Lose Designation

Emmett Till’s Accuser Dies At 88

Read more