Simeon Wright, who was one of a handful of eyewitnesses to the 1955 abduction of his cousin Emmett Till, died Monday after a battle with cancer. He was 74.
Till was 14-years-old when he was abducted in 1955 and brutally murdered after an incident with the wife of Roy Bryant. The case has become a symbol of injustice in civil rights.
Wright had written a book about his cousin’s racially motivated murder. He never got to see justice served in Till’s case.
Emmett Till was 14-years-old when he was brutally murdered in 1955. His cousin Simeon Wright (right visiting Till’s grave) passed away Monday after a long battle with cancer
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (far left), Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (second left) Simeon Wright (center) a cousin of Emmett Till, a black fourteen year old who was the victim of a racially motivated murder in Mississippi
Wright was there when Till made the fateful error of hitting on a white woman in the 1950’s in Money, Mississippi.
Till had told friends he had a white girlfriend back home in Chicago so his friends dared him to ask the white woman working the counter at a nearby store out on a date.
He went into the store, bought candy, and said ‘Bye baby’ to Carolyn Bryant, and whistled at her as he walked out.
Mamie Till Mobley weeps at her son’s funeral on Sept. 6, 1955, in Chicago. The mother of Emmett Till insisted that her son’s body be displayed in an open casket forcing the nation to see the brutality directed at blacks in the South at the time
Roy Bryant, one of two men charged with the kidnapping and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago, sits in court on the opening day of the trial. With him are his wife Carolyn, at whom Till allegedly whistled
After their acquittal in the Emmett Till trial, defendant Roy Bryant (left), smokes a cigar as his wife happily embraces him Right: Emmett Till in his casket in this image published on the cover of African American Jet magazine, the image sparked rallies for equal civil rights
Days later Carolyn’s husband, enraged by his wife’s story of what happened, along with his half brother came for Till on August 28, 1955.
Wright and Emmett were sleeping in bed when J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant entered with guns.
‘They had come for Bobo,’ Wright wrote in his book ‘Simeon’s Story.’ ‘No begging, pleading or payment was going to stop them.’
‘I must have stayed in the bed for hours, petrified,’ Wright wrote.
Bryant and Milam took Till from the home, despite Wright’s mothers pleading and offering money to the men.
Till’s body was found days later floating in the Tallahatchie River. He had a 75-pound gin fan tied to his neck. The men had brutally beaten him, gouged his eye out and shot him in the head.
His mother held an open casket funeral back in their home town of Chicago to show how her 14-year-old son was murdered by racists. More than 100,000 people attended the funeral.
People fainted, cried and gasped at the sight of Till’s body, and the image of him in his coffin ran in African American Jet Magazine.
The image of his inflated, contorted face was published on the cover of Jet, and ignited and mobilized the public to rally for equal rights.
An all white-jury acquitted Bryant and Milam, to the outrage of the country.
It took the jury less than an hour to acquit Bryant and Milam of Till’s murder.
A jury member later said: ‘We wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t stopped to drink pop.’
At the time, Mississippi had very few white on black crime convictions, and led the nation in lynchings.
Several months later, the men admitted killing Emmett in an interview with Look Magazine, safe in the knowledge they were protected by double jeopardy laws and were paid $3,000 for sharing their story.
Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Keith Beauchamp, director, and Simeon Wright
Simeon Wright, right, cousin of Emmett Till and Cook County sheriff Thomas Dart view the original casket of Emmett Till held in a storage room at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois
Carolyn had said afterwards nothing Emmett could have done would have justified his death, and that she feels ‘tender sorrow’ for his mother, known as Mamie Till-Mobley, who campaigned for civil rights for her entire life until she died in 2003.
John Milam died at 61 in 1981 from bone cancer and Roy Bryant also died from cancer in 1994.
Wright had gone to great lengths to keep Till’s case in the public eye.
Besides writing a book about his cousin’s murder he had recently been working on a film project with filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.