MONEY -The bricks of what was once Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market in this backroads area of the Mississippi Delta are held together only by masses of dark green ivy and crumbling cement.
Leafy branches now arch over the roofless store where 14-year-old Emmett Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant in 1955. For that, the black youth from Chicago was kidnapped by Bryant's husband, Roy, her brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, and other men. They tortured and murdered Till, then dumped his disfigured body in the Tallahatchie River.
A jury acquitted Milam and Bryant after an hour, saying it only deliberated that long because they took a "soda pop break." In the nearly 50 years since that trial, both dreams of justice and the two Mississippi white men who admitted the murder have passed into history.
Now, the U.S. Justice Department is reopening the Till murder investigation. R. Alexander Acosta, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, this past week credited a documentary about the case for prompting the new investigation.
Older residents of Money say that even before the renewed interest in Till, a local man with family ties to the 1955 trial was trying to bring that dark episode to light.
Harry Tribble, a Delta catfish farmer, is the son of the foreman of the Till jury. He now owns the store and wants to restore it as a civil rights museum. Milky white kittens and puppies play under the oaks that shade Tribble's stately home which sits between the old grocery and the sparkling Tallahatchie.
"My husband was only 2 years old when his father was on the jury and his family never wanted to discuss it," Adrian Tribble said of husband Harry. "It was a secret. No one wanted to remember it. My husband studied the civil rights era on his own."
Now Tribble hopes a museum will help document and preserve the truth of that turbulent period. In Money, where the land is rich and jobs and people are scarce, that would bring history to life for residents born long after the murder.
On August 28, 1955, Till was abducted from his uncle's cabin after Till bought candy at Bryant's store. Bryant's wife claimed Till whistled at her and said, "Bye, baby." Till's body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie - eye detached, ear missing. He was identifiable by the ring on his hand.
Bryant and Milan were arrested. The trial was before an all-white, all-male jury, in Sumner, a town whose motto was: "A Great Place to Raise a Boy."
Mamie Till Mobley, who lobbied valiantly to reopen her son's murder case, died last year.
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