Revisiting a Martyrdom

摘要

A woman's Voice In The Dark, A Voice that meant death. That is what they talk about, the children who survived, even as the decades pass and their hair grays. Not just about the two famous killers with a flashlight and a gun wresting a boy from his bed 49 years ago, but about those who helped them. Simeon Wright, who was lying next to his cousin Emmett Till that fateful Mississippi-night;- remem bers the intruders well enough. But, he tells TIME, he also recalls a third man out on the porch. And he repeats his deceased father Mose's recollection that "they took Emmett out to the truck to ask 'Is this the one?' And a female voice said, 'He's the one.'" Mose Wright used to repeat this often. But now a nation is listening again. Last week the Department of Justice announced it was going to crack open history and see if anything new crawled out. Assistant Attorney General R. Alexander Acosta described a joint project with Mississippi to reopen the 1955 inquiry into the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till because "information has been brought to our attention that suggests that other individuals may have been involved in the murder." A main impetus, he said, was an unfinished documentary by novice director Keith Beauchamp.