The news brings an anticlimactic end to new inquiries into one of the most infamous lynchings in American history.
In August of that year, Till, just 14 at the time, was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, from his hometown of Chicago when he was accused of harassing a white woman, 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, in her family’s grocery store.
The men tortured and beat the teenager for hours before killing him and throwing his body into the Tallahatchie River, where it was recovered three days later.
The men confessed to the crime in a paid article for Look magazine just months later, but double jeopardy laws prevented them from being tried again, as Nicole Chavez reports for CNN.
Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother, insisted on displaying her son’s mutilated body in an open casket at his funeral on the South Side of Chicago, which drew more than 100,000 mourners.
In recent decades, authorities have made some attempts to bring legal justice to Till’s family members.
This recently concluded investigation was opened in 2017, after Duke University historian Timothy B.
The DOJ and FBI opened a new investigation to determine whether Bryant had recanted and, if so, whether she had any information that could lead to the prosecution of a living person or herself.
“I have no hate in my heart, but I had hoped that we could get an apology.
She is also a freelance journalist based in Chicago whose work has appeared in Wired, Washingtonian, the Boston Globe, South Bend Tribune, the New York Times and more.