- ^ At the time of Emmett's murder in 1955, Emmett's mother was often referred to as Mamie Till Bradley, using her second husband's surname. In 1957, she married Gene Mobley and then became known as Mamie Till Mobley.
- ^ Accounts are unclear; Till had just completed the seventh grade at the all-black McCosh Elementary School in Chicago.[30] In 2018, a Chicago woman reported that she had been one of a small number of white students in Till's class.[31] According to Mamie Till Mobley, Till had purchased a wallet which included a stock photo of actress Hedy Lamarr.[32]
- ^ Simeon Wright,[36]: 100–101 Mamie Till Mobley,[37] Wheeler Parker,[38] and historian Devery Anderson (2015) stated that Jones exaggerated his role as an eyewitness: he was in the Wright home the night Till was abducted, but had not yet arrived in Mississippi at the time of the store incident.[39]
- ^ During trial, Carolyn Bryant's testimony was taken outside the presence of the jury and ruled inadmissible. ("Emmett Till: US reopens investigation into killing, citing new information". The Guardian. Associated Press. Event occurs at July 12, 2018.)
- ^ Notes later obtained from the defense give a different story, with Bryant earlier claiming she was "insulted" but not mentioning him touching her. ( Mitchell, Jerry (September 4, 2017). "Emmett Till eyewitness dies; saw 1955 abduction of his cousin". Chicago Sun-Times. USA Today. Retrieved July 13, 2018.)
- ^ Unserved arrest warrant, not formally charged
- ^ Bryant and Milam admitted to the murder in an interview after their acquittal.
- ^ Some recollections of this part of the story relate that news of the incident traveled in both black and white communities very quickly. Others say that Carolyn Bryant refused to tell her husband about it. According to some accounts, Till's eldest cousin Maurice Wright, perhaps put off by Till's bragging and smart clothes, told Roy Bryant at his store about Till's interaction with Bryant's wife.[64][65][66]
- ^ Several major inconsistencies between what Bryant and Milam told interviewer William Bradford Huie and what they had told others were noted by the FBI in 2006. The pair of men told Huie they were sober, yet reported years later that they had been drinking. In the interview, they said they had driven what would have been 164 miles (264 km) looking for a place to dispose of Till's body, to the cotton gin to obtain the fan, and back again, which the FBI noted would be impossible in the time they were witnessed having returned. Several witnesses recalled that they saw Bryant, Milam, and two or more black men with Till's beaten body in the back of the pickup truck in Glendora, yet they did not tell Huie they were in Glendora. (FBI, [2006], pp. 86–96.)
- ^ Many years later, there were allegations that Till had been castrated. (Mitchell, 2007) John Cothran, the deputy sheriff who was at the scene where Till was removed from the river testified, however, that apart from the decomposition typical of a body being submerged in water, his genitals had been intact. (FBI [2006]: Appendix Court transcript, p. 176.) Mamie Till-Mobley also confirmed this in her memoirs. (Till-Bradley and Benson, p. 135.)
- ^ When Jet publisher John H. Johnson died in 2005, people who remembered his career considered his decision to publish Till's open-casket photograph his greatest moment. Michigan congressman Charles Diggs recalled that for the emotion the image stimulated, it was "probably one of the greatest media products in the last 40 or 50 years". (Dewan, 2005)
- ^ Following the trial, Strider told a television reporter that should anyone who had sent him hate mail arrive in Mississippi, "the same thing's gonna happen to them that happened to Emmett Till".[97]
- ^ The trial transcript says "There he is", although witnesses recall variations of "Dar he", "Thar he", or "Thar's the one". Wright's family protested that Mose Wright was made to sound illiterate by newspaper accounts and insisted he said "There he is." (Mitchell, 2007)
- ^ Note: Blacks were generally excluded from juries because they were disenfranchised; jurors were drawn only from registered voters.
- ^ A month after Huie's article appeared in Look, T. R. M. Howard worked with Olive Arnold Adams of The New York Age to publish a version of the events that agreed more with the testimony at the trial and what Howard had been told by Frank Young. It appeared as a booklet titled Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till. Howard also acted as a source for an as-yet-unidentified reporter using the pseudonym Amos Dixon in the California Eagle. Dixon wrote a series of articles implicating three black men, and Leslie Milam, whom he reported had participated in Till's murder in some way. Time Bomb and Dixon's articles had no lasting effect in the shaping of public opinion. Huie's article in the far more widely circulated Look became the most commonly accepted version of events.[131]
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