Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy visiting family in Mississippi from Chicago, was brutally murdered in August 1955. J.W. Milam and his brother Roy Bryant, both white, were charged with the crime. Unfortunately, to no one’s surprise, they were acquitted by an all-white, male jury. What happened to Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam after the trial?
The brief obituary on Juanita Milam ran in the (Biloxi, Miss.) Sun Herald, but few noticed her passing, despite her being the widow of a killer in one of the nation’s most notorious crimes. On Aug. 20, 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth from Chicago arrived in Money, Miss., by train,
Widow of Emmett Till killer dies quietly, notoriously. Whatever Juanita Milam knew about the 1955 murder of a Chicago teen may have died with her. Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Miss., in 1955, allegedly for whistling at a white woman in a country store.
Like Till’s mother and later, Carolyn Bryant, Juanita Milam experienced the death of a son, when in 2008 her eldest, Bill, died in Greenville at age 57. She is survived by her son Harvey, a sister, a brother, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Attempts to contact two of her grandchildren were unsuccessful.
Where did the Milams live after the murder?
A year after the murder, the Milams were reported to be living on a farm in Mississippi between Ruleville and Cleveland.
JACKSON, Miss. — The death of a 86-year-old Mississippi woman barely made headlines last week. The brief obituary on Juanita Milam ran in the (Biloxi, Miss.) Sun Herald, but few noticed her passing, despite her being the widow of a killer in one of the nation’s most notorious crimes. On Aug. 20, 1955, Emmett Till, …
Milam and Bryant were arrested just after the abduction and went on trial for murder on Sept. 19, 1955. An all-white jury acquitted them five days later. The Till murder remains one of the most brutal in American history, and the trial verdict is considered one of the nation’s great injustices.
Their story, which appeared in the Jan. 24, 1956, issue of Look magazine , contains gross inaccuracies. Nevertheless, the article captivated readers all over the nation. Any profiteering off Emmett Till’s blood apparently backfired in the end, however.
She is survived by her son Harvey, a sister, a brother, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Attempts to contact two of her grandchildren were unsuccessful.
Till and his frightened companions got in their own car and sped off toward home. Three days later, at around 2 a.m., the woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, forced their way into the Wright home, grabbed Till out of bed at gunpoint, and took him away.
Juanita died quietly on Jan. 14 in Ocean Springs, Miss., her home for the last several years. Mary Juanita Thompson was born in Greenville, Miss., on Dec. 10, 1927, the fifth of six children born to Albert and Myrtle Thompson. She married World War II veteran John William Milam on Dec. 10, 1949, her 22nd birthday.
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