Emmett Till's Cousin Recalls 1955 Murder Sunday at Evanston Church

A witness to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till recalled the circumstances behind the ordeal at a church in Evanston on Sunday.

Simeon Wright, Till’s cousin, took an audience at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church back to when Till - from Chicago - was 14 and visiting Wright and family in Mississippi at the time, the Daily Northwestern reports.

Wright has been frustrated with inaccurate accounts of the events since the incident, the report stated.

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Wright, 12 at the time, recalled the day he was at Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market when the store owner’s wife alleged Till grabbed her, put his arms around her and asked her on a date. But none of that happened.

“We didn’t dare him to go to the store — the white folk said that,” Wright said. “They said that he had pictures of his white girlfriend. There were no pictures. They never talked to me. They never interviewed me.”

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Wright said Till whistled at the store owner’s wife, quickly ran into a car and left without speaking to the woman or her husband. But a few days later, Wright was sleeping in the same bed as his cousin when two white men - one holding a .45 caliber gun - took Till away.

“They drove away with Emmett,” Wright said. “I never saw him alive again. After they left, I was in shock. I laid there until the sun came up the next morning. I got up the next day and my whole world had changed.”

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Three days later, Till’s mutilated body was found.

The trial took place later that year. The killers were found not guilty despite testimony from Wright’s father and the identification of Till’s body.

It may be more than a half-century later, but not much has changed - Rev. Taurus Scurlock and others said.

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“I need someone in here to think about Emmett Till,” Scurlock said. “I need someone here to think about Michael Brown. I need someone to think about all the young black people that are being killed senselessly.”

After keeping his version of events to himself for 20 or so years, he opened up and eventually wrote a book called “Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till.”

more via the Daily Northwestern