In the year after their acquittal, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam told their story to William Bradford Huie in a piece for Look magazine. According to Huie, the two admitted to killing the teenager. Upon abducting Till at the home of his great-uncle Mose Wright, Milam recalled asking him: "You the nigger who did the talking?" "Yeah," Till answered. "Don't say 'Yeah' to me: I'll blow your head off.'"27 In his account, Milam continued to characterize the incident as a legitimate effort to maintain white-black social hierarchy. Blaming an unrepentant Till for his own murder, Milam explained, "He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers in their place. I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time to put a few people on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are going to stay in their place."28

In other words, lynching images, such as those of Emmett Till, are too visually provocative, too viscerally challenging, to be contained by time or distance.

If the men who killed Emmett Till had known his body would free a people, they would have let him live.