Tyre Nichols’ family is suing Memphis police for his death beating, alleging parallels with what happened to Emmett Till.
According to a recent federal lawsuit, Nichols’ family links his death to the infamous Emmett Till killing in 1955, claiming that Nichols, like Till, was beaten by the “hands of a modern-day lynch mob.”
The Nichols family is suing the City of Memphis, Chief of Police Cerelyn Davis, and the policemen responsible for the vicious beating of Tyre Nichols.
Who was Emmett Till?
Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old African American child, who was born on July 25, 1941, was killed in Mississippi in 1955 after being kidnapped, tortured, and accused of insulting Carolyn Bryant in her family’s grocery shop. He died on August 28, 1955.
His murder’s ferocity and the fact that his assailants were found not guilty brought to light the long history of violent discrimination against African Americans in the United States. became a symbol of the civil rights struggle after his death.
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Till was raised in Chicago, Illinois, where he was born. He was visiting family in the Mississippi Delta, close to Money, Mississippi, in August 1955 while on summer vacation. He spoke with Carolyn Bryant, a married white owner of a small grocery store nearby, who was 21 years old. Till was charged with flirting with, touching, or whistling at Bryant despite the fact that what transpired at the store is still up for debate.
Perhaps unknowingly, Till’s relationship with Bryant broke the unspoken rules of conduct for a black man dealing with a white woman in the Jim Crow South.
A few nights after the incident in the store, Till’s great-uncle’s home was the scene of an armed kidnapping by Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam. He was taken away, beaten, and dismembered before being shot in the head and having his remains lowered into the Tallahatchie River. The boy’s damaged and bloated body was found and pulled from the river three days later.
