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Outlook: I was there the night Emmett Till was taken

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Emmett Till, Wheeler Parker and Joe Williams

26/01/2023 GMT

I was there the night Emmett Till was taken

BBC World Service - Outlook, I was there the night Emmett Till was taken

Wheeler Parker is Emmett Till's cousin and the last surviving witness to his abduction

In 1955 Emmett Till was lynched for whistling at a white woman; the 14-year-old’s death ignited America’s civil rights movement. His cousin Wheeler Parker witnessed his abduction.

Emmett Till’s brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 sparked a revolution in America. The 14-year-old was lynched for whistling at a white woman at a grocery store. His mother Mamie Till-Mobley decided to have an open casket at his funeral to show the world how viciously two white men had mutilated her son, before they shot him and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. Rosa Parks said she had Emmett Till’s name in her head when she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus a few months later. 

Reverend Wheeler Parker was Emmett's cousin and was with him that fateful day at the store and was in the same house when the men came with a flashlight and pistol to take him away.  Now 83, Wheeler has written a book alongside lawyer and journalist Christopher Benson called: A Few Days Full of Trouble. He tells Jo Fidgen about his relationship with Emmett and how his cousin’s shocking killing has shaped his life and Christopher talks about their fight for justice for Emmett. 

This programme contains some distressing scenes.

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com

Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Deiniol Buxton and Troy Holmes

(Photo: Emmett Till (L), Wheeler Parker (C), Joe B. Williams (R). Credit: Courtesy of the Wheeler and Marvel Parker Collection).

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