60 Minutes rewind for many of you the name Emmett Till May not sound familiar but what happened to him in 1955 stunned the nation Emmett Till was a young black boy who was murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman and his death was a spark that ignited the civil rights movement in America two white men were put on trial for killing him but in spite of strong evidence against them they were acquitted in about an hour by an all-white jury why are we telling you this now because this past spring the U.S justice department opened a new investigation based on evidence suggesting that more than a dozen people may have been involved in the murder of Emmett Till and that at least five of them are still alive those five could face criminal prosecution and before we tell you about them let us tell you what happened to Emmett Till he was 14 years old when he was kidnapped tortured and killed the two men who were acquitted of his murder were Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W Milo the failure to punish anyone for the crime made headlines across the country and around the world exposing the racial hatred and unequal Justice for blacks that was pervasive in the segregated South where laws dictated where blacks could eat and drink and where they could sleep but Emmett Till wasn't from the south he was from Chicago and just visiting relatives in Mississippi in August of 1955 when his nightmare began image 16 year old cousin traveled to Mississippi with him the family was reluctant to let Emmett take the trip afraid his free-spirited nature could get him into trouble in the Deep South that cousin who traveled with him is wheeler Parker Jr now 65 years old he was the center of Attraction he's a little pranks he loves fun he loved jokes you know he just was there in the center of everything he's kind of a natural born leader why would that be a problem I mean Mississippi if I were to be a problem that would be a problem because uh the mississippians what he thought was just fun or a joke wasn't funny to them so before you went down did anybody say look here are the do's and the don'ts about going to Mississippi you do this you don't do that oh yes that's routine you're always prepared to go to Mississippi to stay alive because you know once you got to Mississippi you had no protection under the law you couldn't call anyone for help once you were there if you got in trouble for imitate until the trouble started here at Bryant's meat market and grocery store in Money Mississippi back then most of the customers at this store were black workers from nearby cotton plantations the store was owned by a white couple Roy Bryant and his 21 year old wife Carolyn who was behind the counter the afternoon that Emmett Till and his cousins came in to buy some candy as he was leaving the store Emmett Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant and she went to get a gun Simeon Wright Emmett Till's cousin who lived in Mississippi was 12 years old on that day when they went to Bryant's grocery store today at 62 he says the sound of Emmett whistling is as Vivid to him now as it was 50 years ago when he whistle we all we ran we jumped in the car and we got out of there just because he was oh yes it's like if you if you're a kid you throw a rock and break a window you don't hang around and see what's going to happen and you knew that in Mississippi at that time 1955 that was something you didn't do that was something you didn't do Emmett Till and his cousins raced home that day and hoped nothing would come of what imminent had done but three days later Carolyn Brian's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W Milam went looking for him until in the middle of the night and found him and his cousins at the home of Reverend Mose Wright Emmett's late great uncle who recounted what happened next Sunday morning about 2 30 . I Heard a Voice at the door and I who was it and it said this is Mr bright I want to talk with you and the boy and when I opened the door that was a man standing with a pistol in one hand the flashlight in another Emmett Till and Simeon Wright moves right son were to sleep together in one room and Wheeler Parker was in another room awakened by the sounds of angry voices field just regret me because in my heart I say I'm getting ready to die and at 16 I wasn't ready to die and I could just feel like the whole bed was shaking and then these guys come with the pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the oven and for some reason I closed my eyes and I opened them and they just passed right on by me went to the next room I woke up and I I looked I saw two men standing over the bed with the one-handed gun which was JW Milan I saw uh Roy Bryant they ordered me to lay back down and go back to sleep and they ordered Emmett to get up and put his clothes on and my mother was pleading and begging with them not to take him my dad was pleading with him and and my mother then at that time offered to to give them money to leave uh Emmett alone and Roy Bryant kind of hesitated but JW Milan he didn't hesitate at all he didn't even think about taking money he came there to take Emmett and that's what he proceeded to do before taking Emmett Till out of the house Simeon Wright says J.W Milam threatened his father Reverend Mose Wright before they left my room he turned and asked my daddy how old was he my daddy told him that he was 64. and J.W Milan said if you tell anybody about this you won't live to get 65. well what did you think then this man wasn't afraid of the law he marched into my home take out my cousin and wasn't afraid the law was going to bother him this must have been terrifying for you I mean you were just you weren't 13 yet 12 years old 12 years old lying in bed in the middle of the night two white men come in one with a gun and tells your cousin to get up and get dressed yes yes I'd have been scared to death not on a free but that was a a sorrow of sadness over the whole house look like you look like you could you can cut the grief in the in the house because after they left no one said anything Holly I would like to hear my dad say was um on August 31st 1955 three days after he'd been abducted Emmett Till's mangled body was found by a boy fishing in the waters of a Tallahatchie River not far from money his body had been weighted down by a 75 pound fan from a cotton gin attached to his neck by barbed wire he'd been badly tortured and I was detached an ear cut off and he appeared to have been shot in the head his death was the birth of a powerful and Lasting symbol of Southern racism in the 20th century the local sheriff h.c Strider a plantation owner and Ardent segregationist tried to have the body buried immediately in this small Cemetery in Money Mississippi hoping no one in the outside world would ever find out what happened to Emmett Till but Emmett's mother Mamie battled with Mississippi authorities and was able to have her son's body return to Chicago so she could identify him before she buried it Mamie 2 was determined never to let anyone forget the brutal way in which her son was killed she described the chilling story in one of the final interviews she gave before her death last year at age 81. I looked at the bridge of his nose and it looked like someone had taken a meat Chopper and chopped it and I looked to this teeth because I took so much pride in his teeth his teeth were the prettiest things I'd ever seen in my life I thought and uh I only saw two who read the rest of them had just been knocked out and I was looking at his ears and that's when I discovered a whole about here and I could see daylight on the other side I said I wasn't necessary to shoot him some 50 000 people nearly all of them black turned out for Emmett Till's funeral in an enormous public display of grief and solidarity Mamie till ordered the funeral director to place our son in an open casket and permitted this shocking photograph of Emmett's corpse which was published in Jet magazine and seen across the country it ignited protests Civil Disobedience and backlash that would consume the South through the 60s I said I want the world to see this because when people saw what had happened to this little 14 year old boy they knew then that not only were men black men in danger but black children as well the same day that Emmett Till was buried Roy Bryant and J.W Milam were indicted on charges of kidnapping and murder their trial was held in the small Mississippi town of Sumner billed as a good place to raise a boy the star witness was Emmett Till's late great uncle Mose Wright who bravely stood up in the courtroom and pointed his finger at Milam and Bryant as the ones who had come to his home and abducted Emmett Till at gunpoint another key witness was an 18 year old sharecropper named Willie Reed who said that on the morning after Emmett Till was abducted he saw Emmett on a truck with six people Roy Bryant J.W Milam two other white men and two black men who worked for Milam soon after Reid said he saw the same truck parked in front of a barn managed at the time by Milam's brother and heard the screams of a young boy he presumed was Emmett Till today at age 67 Reed says he still cannot get those sounds out of his mind I heard the streaming being streaming and being and I said to myself you could hear the looks yes you could you could according to Willie Reed and another witness four white men came out of the barn including Milam who walked right up to Reed carrying a 45 caliber pistol Marlon was coming out of the bond so he actually said listen say uh did you all hear anything and I said no I haven't heard anything why would you say that I mean you had heard something you had heard screaming you had heard somebody being beaten yeah I saw about it was being beaten but then you see modeling come on with what I could say with a khaki pants on and a green shedding 45 on his side then he asked you and what's he gonna say you didn't hear anything I didn't hear anything you knew that's what he wanted to hear right when they found the body did you put two and two together and think that what you had heard going on in that Barn that that was Emmett Till are you sure I wish you were there I wish you were there fearing for his life after testifying against Milam and Bryant Willie Reed was smuggled out of Mississippi he went to Chicago where he suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized you're a good man you got a lot of Courage for 18 year old I think there are a lot of people who would have walked away from it wouldn't have said a word no I I couldn't I couldn't walk away from that like that because uh even was 14 probably never been admissive in his life and to come to visit his grandfather and they killed himself I mean so that's not right and I saw when he we needed pictures he saw his his body what he was like then I knew that I couldn't say no as the trial Drew to a close attorneys for J.W Milam and Roy Bryant warned the all-white jury that if they voted to convict quote your forefathers will turn over in their graves it took the jury just an hour and seven minutes to return a verdict of not guilty one juror said it wouldn't have taken that long but they stopped to take a soda pop break to make it look good Milam and Bryant were congratulated by their many supporters and kissed their wives in Celebration how do you folks feel now that it's all over Roy how about you I'm just glad it's over with four months after the trial knowing that double jeopardy protected them from being tried again Roy Bryan and J.W Milam admitted to a reporter from look magazine that they had in fact tortured and murdered Emmett Till they were paid four thousand dollars for their story in it Milam said I just made up my mind Chicago boy I said I'm tired of them sending your kind down here to stir up trouble damn you I'm going to make an example of you Emmett Till's family has had to live with that for nearly 50 years that his Killers confessed and nothing ever happened to them now with a new government investigation underway Simeon right hopes someone will finally be held accountable for the murder of his cousin JW Modern War Bryant confess that they kill Emin the people of the state of Mississippi said they didn't we need to reconcile that statement and we need to send a message to those who are committing crimes against blacks like this that you can get by but you can't get away the Justice eventually is going to find you when the U.S justice department announced recently that it was opening a new investigation into the 1955 murder of 14 year old Emmett Till It said the case was a quote grotesque miscarriage of justice and that it is examining evidence pointing to the possible involvement of more than a dozen people in the crime Rory Bryan and J.W Milam who were tried and acquitted are dead but a number of others are still alive and could face criminal charges for their role in Emmett Till's abduction beating murder and attempts to cover it up the justice department says it is largely because of this young man that the case has been reopened his name is Keith beauchon an amateur filmmaker and it's from Louisiana like a lot of people in this country he was moved by the shocking photograph of Emmett Till's corpse that he saw while looking through old magazines when he was just 10 years old and ever since Beauchamp has devoted much of his life to uncovering the truth about what happened to him until after seeing the photograph it shocked me tremendously and um when parents came in and set me down and explained to me at that time the story of Emmett Till and it hit me hard it really hit me hard I heard the same story um I mean I remember seeing this picture in that Jet Magazine when I was a kid and I think Emmett Till and I were probably about the same age in 1955 14 years old and growing up in in Philadelphia you knew vaguely about the South but like others my parents had protected me from the realities of the South when I saw that picture and I said hey that's when I got my first lesson about the south everyone has a story when they first saw that photograph it stuck with me that how could this person be killed this way a youth you know that was like me it was amazing to me that something like that could happen Keith Beauchamp told us that after reviewing thousands of old documents and talking to numerous Witnesses with knowledge of the crime he believes that at least 14 people may have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till and that five of them are still alive you describe much of this to Federal and and state investigations and their reaction to that information their reaction was overwhelming they couldn't believe that a person this young would be so interested in finding out the truth I guess they were really stunned that I did so much research on this case so was Senator Charles Schumer a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which has oversight of the justice department after meeting with Keith Beauchamp and his attorney Ken Thompson and examining the research Beauchamp was gathering for a documentary film he was working on Senator Schumer urged the department to reopen the Emmett Till case saying it was never fully investigated 50 years ago how would you characterize a conduct of the federal law enforcement agencies for the 50 years of this federal law enforcement back then and even many years later reflected the attitude of America oh these things happen this is how it is down there it is a stain and will be a stain on both the Mississippi law enforcement officials and the United States federal government justice department that it took a young filmmaker to bring to light what they should have brought to light in 1955 Emmett Till's mother Mamie tried to get her government to bring the truth to light she sent a telegram to president Dwight Eisenhower urging that Justice be meted out to all persons involved in the beastly lynching of her son in spite of FBI records and news reports at the time citing specific individuals President Eisenhower didn't take any action Emmett Till's mother died before the government reopened the case this past spring a case based largely on the research of Keith Beauchamp among his discoveries was Henry Lee Loggins now 81 years old and living in Ohio at the time of the murder Loggins was working for J.W Milam FBI files from 1955 refer to Witnesses who claim they saw Logans on the truck with Emmett Till after he was abducted one respected black newspaper at the time even reported that Loggins allegedly held Emmett Till down as Milam and Bryant tortured him Loggins was also reportedly ordered by them to attach the fan from a cotton gin around Till's neck just before tossing him into the Tallahatchie River Henry Lee Loggins is now under investigation by the justice department when we talked to him recently he denied the allegations that have dogged him for half a century I wouldn't say he didn't tell a lie I went with them people I I saw another how do you think your name came up I mean not just in newspaper articles but also with the FBI why did people say that Henry Lee Loggins was there I can't figure that out I couldn't figure that out today Henry Lee how do you explain all these stories it just won't go away such as you were there on the back of the truck which I wasn't that you participated in the in the Abduction the kidnapping and the murder of Emma too which I wouldn't that you tossed his body in the river which I wasn't what's your name yeah yeah I said I wouldn't say it again tell you no lie I don't know nothing about that case what are you going to do when the FBI comes knocking out I'm telling them same thing that I wasn't there and that's them too Lord know I wouldn't ask five other black men now dead have also been implicated in some way in the abduction and murder of him until if any of the allegations are true the question is why knowing now that black men could possibly have been involved I just keep thinking you know about what could have been going through him until his mind you know seeing this and how do you explain that that well they would turn on one of their own we believe that they were forced to participate in the crime it was going to even be them I Emmett Till it was shocking at first because for so long you've heard you know white men were involved and that's what was it was a white and black man you can help but you know be amazed it seems clear that black men were involved Emmett Till's late great uncle Mose Wright said there was a black man on the porch when J.W Milam and Roy Bryant came to take Emmett Till he also said he heard a woman's voice that night coming from a truck parked outside he believed it was Roy Bryant's wife Carolyn the woman Emmett Till had whistled at several days earlier inside her husband's grocery store in Money Mississippi most right son Simeon Emmett's cousin says his father told him the same thing oh yes it was a another man standing on the porch my dad talked about it that was uh another person in the truck because when they marched Emmett out to the truck and they asked the person inside the truck is this someone my dad said heard a woman's voice identifying him and as the boy that did the whistling so that must have been Brian's wife Mr Bryant at that time we believed it was uh Brian's wife and after 48 and some odd years there's nothing has arisen to dispel that belief apparently the local authorities back then believed it too and according to FBI communiques issued an arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant on suspicion of kidnapping but she was never arrested or charged today we've learned that Carolyn Bryant is a focus of the Justice Department's new investigation suspected of having assisted her husband Roy and J.W Milam in the Abduction of Emmett Till she was divorced in 1979 and has since remarried and moved several times she had all but disappeared from public view until we found her now age 70 and known as Carolyn Dunham living in Greenville Mississippi while our cameraman was able to take these pictures of her when I went to her house she wouldn't answer the door moments later her son Frank Bryant arrived and we tried to talk to him can we talk to Mrs Dunham can you talk to me can I talk you get her to come out no I have some questions I'd like to ask her about Emmett Till I'm sorry will she come out and talk to us what'd I do to you tell me again no she won't back I'm back I said goodbye goodbye you're leaving we called the house later in the day in either Frank Bryant nor his mother Carolyn would discuss the Emmett Till case any further we've learned that the justice department could complete its investigation within a year and criminal charges against at least five people could follow but the justice department and the FBI declined to comment what would Justice be in this case in my opinion there ought to be a full trial and if there are convictions even though the people are old who did it they ought to go to jail while that may finally bring a measure of Justice to the family of Emmett Till it also brings back the pain these memories are still sharp after 50 years oh yes I'll never go away I'm still saying how could that happen why would anyone hate anyone to beat him and kill him and torture him like that how can a human being do that to a level all because of a whistle