Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in 1955, kidnapped from the Money, Mississippi, home where the young Chicagoan was visiting his cousins for the summer. The two white men charged with Till’s murder were acquitted in a trial that Collaboraction Theatre dramatizes with “Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till.”
The outcome of that infamous trial — like the monumental historic legacy shaped by Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, and her decision to have an open-casket funeral for her son — is never in doubt. Brothers Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were acquitted of killing Till. After the trial, both bragged to Look magazine that they were, in fact, the murderers.
