Moses wright and emmett till

Emmett Till was kidnapped from this location on the evening of August 28, 1955. He was staying at the home of his great uncle and aunt, Moses and Elizabeth Wright, who sharecropped 25 acres of cotton on the Grover Frederick Plantation.

In the September 1955 trial of Emmett Till’s killers, the precise role of the Wright homestead was hotly contested. The prosecution argued that the murder started here, at the Wright home, the site of the kidnapping.

Moses wright

The defense argued that the murder began at Bryant’s Grocery, three miles to the west. While this may seem like an arcane or irrelevant debate, the fate of the accused hung in the balance.

The prosecution argued that the Till case began when, in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 28, a car approached the Wright house in the pitch-black night; that car contained at least four people, two of whom were the accused half-brothers J.

W. Milam and Roy Bryant. Upon entering the home armed with flashlights and .45 caliber handguns, the