Mamie Till Bradley’s Telegram to President Eisenhower Requesting Justice for Emmett Till (1955)

Date: September 2, 1955

Created By: Mamie Bradley

Original or Replica: Original

Era: Civil Rights, The Presidency

Collection: Eisenhower Presidential Library

Citations: DDE’s Records as President, Alphabetical File, Box 3113, Emmett Till; NAID #12196780

This document is a telegram sent by Mamie E. Bradley (Mamie Till-Mobley), the mother of Emmett Till, to President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 2, 1955, just days after her son’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. Addressed directly to the President at the White House, the telegram is one of the earliest personal appeals to the Eisenhower administration following the murder that would become a defining event of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

In the telegram, Mamie Bradley pleads with President Eisenhower to personally ensure that justice is carried out for all those responsible for the “beastly lynching” of her fourteen-year-old son in Money, Mississippi. Expressing both grief and determination, she asks for a direct response from the President, reflecting the growing expectation among many Americans that the federal government should intervene when state authorities failed to protect the civil rights of African Americans.