My Cousin Emmett Till Was Bigger Than Life. I Was With Him the Night He Was Killed.

Even more than 60 years later, Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., 87, vividly remembers the night that his cousin and best friend, Emmett Till, was last seen alive.

This account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Emmett loved life. He was bigger than life. He was the center of attention.

He wasn’t even supposed to go South. There was no intention, no plan, for him to be part of the trip because of his age. When you went to the South in those days, you had an escort when you got there, and you were usually a little older. So there was no question: He wasn’t going South, and there was no preparation for that. But somehow, he talked them into letting him go to Money, Mississippi.

We got there on a Sunday. That Wednesday, we went to the store. I was 16, so I was aware of the mores of the South. If you didn’t get that stuff right, you were in trouble.

I remember being in the store. Everything was behind the counter, and the clerk would bring it to you. And I remember Bobo — that’s what we called Emmett — coming in and my heart skipped. I thought, “Man, I sure hope he got his language together today,” meaning saying “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” Nothing happened while we were in there, so I left him in the store. Simeon Wright, the brother of my Uncle Maurice, went in to be with Emmett. Uncle Maurice sent Simeon in.

They came out of the store. And then Ms. Carolyn Bryant came out of the store. Emmett was a prankster. He loved to make people laugh. And he let off this big wolf whistle. Man, we could’ve died. If you could’ve disappeared into the ground, that’s what you would’ve wanted to do. Fear gripped us. We knew that it was time to go.

We left the store and thought that somebody might be following us. We said, “Man, they’re after us!” We jumped out of the car and hid. Emmett begged us not to tell my grandpa — we’d only been there three days, so we decided not to tell.

Early Sunday morning, around 2:30 a.m., white men came to the house. I heard them talking, saying, “You got two boys here from Chicago. We want to talk to the boy who whistled.” And I started praying — we were very religious — and I said, “I’m getting ready to die. These people are gonna kill us.” I knew that Emmett had violated the Southern way of life.

It was dark — so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I heard them coming through the house. I was shaking like a leaf on a tree, praying. They came into my room with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other one. I closed my eyes, waiting to be shot. But they passed me.

They went into another room where Emmett was. They woke him up and left with him. That was the last time we saw him alive.

I tell this story of Emmett because it depicts the South, and the best thing we can do is acknowledge that it did happen. Even now, there are those who try to say that he must have done something, and that whitewashes history or relieves America of its guilt. They want us to stop telling those stories. But every Black family in the South has a story to tell — believe me.