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Emmett Till investigation records released ahead of 70th anniversary of his killing

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Published  August 22, 2025 8:26pm EDT
U.S.
FOX 5 Atlanta
Emmett Till honored by White House with national monument

Emmett Till honored by White House with national monument

President Biden will reportedly establish a national monument this week to honor Emmett Till, the Black teen from Chicago whose 1955 lynching while on vacation in Mississippi helped galvanize the civil rights movement. On the anniversary of Till's death, Biden signed a proclamation to create the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi. LiveNOW's Lexie Petrovic spoke with Benjamin Saulsberry from the Emmett Till Interpretive Center about the significance. More LiveNOW from FOX streaming video

The Brief

    • Thousands of federal records related to Emmett Till’s 1955 lynching have been released by the National Archives, just days before the 70th anniversary of his death.
    • The documents reveal how federal agencies, including the Justice Department and FBI, responded to Till's killing.
    • Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was brutally murdered by two white men who were later acquitted.

WASHINGTON - The federal government has made public thousands of pages of records on the lynching of Emmett Till Just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of his killing.

The records in the National Archives, released by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, were released Friday.

Emmett Till investigation records released

Dig deeper:

The records 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.

What they're saying:

"This month marks 70 years since this tragic, watershed moment in American history. Our thoughts are with the Till family." the National Archives and Records Administration said in a news release and statement on social media.

Who is Emmett Till?

Big picture view:

The 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.

Emmett Till is shown lying on his bed, circa 1954. In 1955, Chicago native Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi after he was accused of flirting with a white woman. (Credit: Getty Images)

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.

RELATED: Chicago honors legacy of Emmett Till and Mammie Till-Mobley with national monument

His killing galvanized the Civil Rights Movement after Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket so that the country could see the brutality. 

In 2022, President Joe Biden signed a bill named for Till that made lynching a federal hate crime. And in 2023, Biden signed a proclamation establishing a national monument honoring Till and his mother.

The Source: This story was reported from Los Angeles. The Associated Press contributed.

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