Simeon Wrights Tells His Story: What Happened to Emmett Till: New Civil Rights Book

Saturday, August 20, 1955, Emmett and his cousin, Wheeler Parker, boarded the Illinois Central train to visit Emmett's great-uncle, Mose Wright, his second cousin, Simeon Wright, his cousins Maurice and Robert Wright, and friends, all of whom he had visited before in the Mississippi Delta, near Money, Mississippi.

They arrived in Mississippi on Sunday, August 21st. With their stories of life in Chicago, the two cousins were the center of attention. Monday morning, Emmett and his cousins began picking cotton for his great-uncle, Mose Wright, a sharecropper whose farm was near Money, Mississippi.

On Wednesday, August 24th, Emmett (14), along with Simeon (12), Maurice (16) Wright, Wheeler Parker (16), Roosevelt Crawford (15) and Ruthie Mae Crawford (18), went into town, Money, Mississippi, after a day of picking cotton.

Each had a few pennies for candy, bubble gum, and soft drinks. Downtown Money, Mississippi. consisted of four buildings, one of which was Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, owned and operated by Roy Bryant. The Bryant's store catered to African-American field hands, so African Americans often hung around the store playing checkers and otherwise having fun after a day in the fields picking cotton. Carolyn Bryant, wife of Roy Bryant, and Juanita Milam, wife of J.W. Milam, ran the store that afternoon. Roy Bryant was away.

What happened next, made civil rights history...

With his new book, Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till, written with the journalist Herb Boyd and published in January by Lawrence Hill Books, Simeon Wright exposes the errors of past renderings of the story and, in the process, gains some measure of justice.



“I’m excited in a way that I get a chance to tell what actually happened,” says Wright, 67, a retired pipe fitter who lives in west suburban Summit Argo.

What happened in 1955 not only became a cautionary tale for a generation of young African Americans learning about race relations but also lit a spark for the modern mass civil rights movement. The essentials of the story are familiar: The Chicagoan Emmett Till and his cousin Wheeler Parker Jr. were visiting the Wright family in August 1955. The boys, along with a group of friends and cousins, were in Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money when Emmett whistled at Carolyn Bryant, who was white and who owned the store with her husband, Roy Bryant.

“I think [Emmett] wanted to get a laugh out of us or something,” Wright told Chicago Magazine. “He was always joking around, and it was hard to tell when he was serious.”

See the interview here.