Milam, were charged with Till's murder, but they were acquitted by an all-white jury.Īfter being notified her son was kidnapped, Till-Mobley leaned on Chicago's Black political infrastructure. Bryant's then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W.

Till was kidnapped, and his badly beaten body was found in the Tallahatchie River, with a cotton gin fan tied around his neck to weigh him down. He was accused of whistling at and making sexual advances towards Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who later remarried and is now known as Carolyn Bryant Donham.

'There was a freedom and an openness and just sort of a sense of community that we all tried to replicate in Chicago, but you understood when you were in the South, that that's where it all came from,' she added.Įmmett Till, who grew up in that familial environment in Chicago, was killed in Mississippi at the age of 14 while visiting family in 1955. So we lived on one block, and around the corner lived my maternal grandmother, along with another sister, and around the corner from them lived my maternal grandfather.' 'My mother's side of the family, we lived with one of my great-aunts, my grandfather's sister. 'My family was like most Black families during that time - we all lived around each other,' Obama added. The former first lady discussed her experiences growing up in Chicago. 'For me, both on my mother's side and father's side of the family, folks came from the South,' she said in an interview for 'Let the World See.' 'They moved like most Black folks from the South moved - for opportunity and for safety.' Like Till-Mobley, former first lady Michelle Obama also was a child of the Great Migration. Those roots - and how her background shaped Mamie Till-Mobley as a young single mother into civil rights icon - are explored in the first episode of the three-part documentary series, 'Let the World See,' which examines the impact of Till-Mobley's fight to bring her son back to Chicago and seek justice for his murder. 'Emmett's grandmother, Alma Spearman, was instrumental in moving many of our family members from the South to the Chicago area,' Ollie Gordon, one of Till's cousins, told ABC News. She went on to describe her mother's home the 'the Ellis Island of Chicago' for Black people from Mississippi. Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, wrote in her memoir, the 'Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America,' that she had heard more than 200,000 Black people had moved to Chicago as a part of the Great Migration, including her own family.

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