66 years ago, Emmett Till was tortured and killed. Questions remain.

The six-part Women of the Movement, which tells the story of Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie, is airing on ABC. For many, the program is raising questions about the real-life case.
 
MCIR Founder Jerry Mitchell, who has reported on the Till case for decades, tries to answer some of them.

Did Mamie Till’s courage to open her son’s casket help propel forward the civil rights movement?
Yes, it did. She did that, she said, because she wanted the world to see “what they did to my baby.”
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Is Carolyn Bryant, the woman at the center of the Till case, still alive?
Yes, she is.
 
Is the Till case open?
No, the Justice Department on Dec. 6 made public what MCIR had reported a year earlier — that the Till case was closed, and there would be no charges.
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Why did the Justice Department close the case?
The Justice Department pinned the blame on its inability to confirm a book’s explosive 2017 claim that Carolyn Bryant recanted her story about Till’s actions that fateful day in Money, Mississippi.
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Did she lie when she testified in the murder trial?
Yes, she did.
 
What did she say?
She initially told her husband’s defense lawyer that Till grabbed her hand, asked for a date and whistled at her. But during the trial, she testified that Till grabbed her around the waist, propositioned her and claimed he had had sex with White women before.
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What role did journalist William Bradford Huie play in this case?
Huie got two of the killers to talk (after paying them), but in this column, Jill Collen Jefferson talks about the role Huie played in helping the other lynchers get away with their crime.
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Have any more questions about the Emmett Till case? Email Jerry Mitchell at Jerry.Mitchell@MississippiCIR.org.
You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.