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where was emmett till found

Emmett Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River near a spot known as Graball Landing, just outside Glendora in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi.

Quick Scoop

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago, was lynched while visiting relatives in Mississippi in August 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman at a country store. His murder and the public response became a turning point that helped galvanize the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Where he was found

  • His mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River on August 31, 1955.
  • The recovery site is commonly identified as Graball Landing, near the confluence of the Tallahatchie River and Black Bayou, just outside Glendora, Mississippi.
  • The body had been weighed down with a heavy cotton-gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.

Today’s memorial site

  • Graball Landing is now recognized as a key commemorative site within the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument area.
  • A riverbank marker stands at the Tallahatchie River where his body was discovered, and it has had to be replaced and reinforced multiple times due to racist vandalism, including gunfire.

Why it still matters now

  • The site and story are frequently revisited in documentaries, news features, and public history projects, especially around major anniversaries of the murder and of civil rights milestones.
  • Efforts are ongoing to preserve locations connected to the case—such as Graball Landing and the barn where Till was tortured—as “sacred” sites that confront the history of racial terror in the U.S.

“The brutal lynching of Emmett Till… galvanized the emerging civil rights movement” — from an official U.S. presidential proclamation establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.

TL;DR: Emmett Till was found dead in the Tallahatchie River at Graball Landing, near Glendora, Mississippi, a place that is now a central memorial site.

Would you like a brief timeline of what happened from his abduction to the discovery of his body?