Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. is the last living witness to one of America’s most notorious lynchings.
He was with his cousin, Emmett Till, in 1955 when the 14-year-old was accused of whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi.
During a recent visit to Milwaukee at Holy Redeemer Church, Scripps News Group Correspondent Andrea Williams sat down with the now 85-year-old to discuss the tragic event that still haunts him today.
"Emmett Till was a fun-loving prankster, jokester... always telling a joke, a typical Leo, a natural leader, and just a good, fun person to be around," said Parker.
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Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. was not only Emmett Till’s cousin but also his best friend.
"My grandfather came to Chicago to bury one of his parishioners, and they were going to send me back with him, as they did in those days," recalled Parker.
Parker was 16 at the time and traveling to rural Mississippi. His cousin Emmett, 14, wanted to tag along.
Watch: Last living witness recalls the lynching of Emmett Till
"They said he couldn't go because they knew he was a prankster, and his style would not fit in the South. Somehow, being who he was, he talked them into letting him go."
Unfamiliar with the racist customs of the South, Emmett visited a local store with his cousins.
"She came out of the store, and she went to her left, my right, and he whistled. We just could not believe that he had whistled... we all made a beeline to the car."
That whistle was directed at Carolyn Bryant Donham, the wife of the store owner. Before her death in 2023, she revealed that she had lied when she accused Till of also grabbing her and making lewd advances. Her false allegations led to a tragedy that Parker will never forget.
"Three days later, they came, and that’s when they took him."
Emmett was brutally beaten, shot in the head, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River.
"If you didn’t live during that time, you would have no idea what it was like. You could read as much as you want, but you had to experience it. You had no protection."
When his body was found, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, fought to have her only son’s body returned to Chicago. He was unrecognizable.
Her famous words —"let the world see what they have done"— led to an open-casket funeral, helping to ignite the civil rights movement.
"His mother was well-prepared as if she was meant for this moment," said Parker.
"Emmett Till was not the first person to suffer such atrocities. Five hundred people were lynched in Mississippi, but their stories either died with them or were silenced."
It took 67 years for the anti-lynching act to be signed into law, making lynching a federal hate crime.
"The wheels of justice in America grind slowly, but they grind. I saw that same spirit in George Floyd and so many other young people who were killed," said Rev. Parker.
The two men who kidnapped and murdered Emmett Till were found not guilty by an all-white jury. They later confessed to the killing. Sixty-six years later, the case was closed with no convictions.
"Most young people don’t know our story. They don’t know the real story because we don’t tell them," said Parker. "I want them to know the kind of person Emmett Till really was. How he has been portrayed for 70 years is not accurate. I knew a fun-loving prankster, always telling jokes. You see a picture of him, and he’s pleasantly smiling—that’s Emmett Till."
This story was originally published by Andrea Williams with the Scripps News Group.
