Money, Mississippi

Money, Mississippi
Unincorporated community

Leflore County Volunteer Fire Department in Money
Money, Mississippi

Location within the state of Mississippi

Coordinates: 33°39′04″N 90°12′33″W / 33.65111°N 90.20917°W / 33.65111; -90.20917Coordinates: 33°39′04″N 90°12′33″W / 33.65111°N 90.20917°W / 33.65111; -90.20917
Country United States
State Mississippi
County Leflore
Elevation 138 ft (42 m)
Time zone Central (CST) (UTC-6)
 • Summer (DST) CDT (UTC-5)
GNIS feature ID 673728[1]

Money is an unincorporated Mississippi Delta community in Leflore County, Mississippi, United States near Greenwood.[2] It has a population of less than 100, down from 400 in the early 1950s when a cotton mill operated in the community. It is on a railroad line and located along the Tallahatchie River. Money is part of the Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area and has the ZIP code 38945. It is notable for the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till by white men, an event that gained nationwide attention.

History

A post office called Money was established in 1901.[3] The community was named for Hernando Money, a United States Senator from Mississippi.[4]

Murder of Emmett Till

Main article: Emmett Till
The remains of Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, where Emmett Till encountered Carolyn Bryant[5]

Money became infamous for the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago, who was visiting his uncle Moses Wright in August 1955. Till attempted to lightly flirt with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working alone at Bryant's Grocery, a store she owned with her husband Roy Bryant.

Later Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, abducted, tortured and murdered Till because of the rumor that he had bothered Bryant's wife. The pair were arrested and tried for the murder, but were acquitted by the all-white jury. They confessed to the killing in an interview with William Bradford Huie in the January, 1956 issue of Look magazine.

Till's mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on an open casket funeral. She wanted people to see what had been done to her son, who had been badly beaten before his death, and she allowed news photographs of the body to be published. National awareness was heightened of lynching in the South and the punishments under Jim Crow. Many Southern historians suggest that the Emmett Till murder helped spark outrage that helped galvanize the civil rights movement of the 1960s, by drawing national attention to injustices in the South.

A wooden bridge crossing the Tallahatchie River at Money was referred to in Bobbie Gentry's 1967 hit song "Ode to Billie Joe". The November 10, 1967 issue of Life contained a photo of Gentry crossing the bridge. That bridge collapsed in June 1972 after being burned by vandals[6] and has since been replaced.

Notable people

References

  1. ↑ "Money". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey.
  2. ↑ "Money, Mississippi". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey.
  3. ↑ "Leflore County". Jim Forte Postal History. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
  4. ↑ Gallant, Frank K. (16 February 2012). A Place Called Peculiar: Stories about Unusual American Place-Names. Courier Corporation. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-486-48360-3.
  5. ↑ "Emmett Till's Legacy 50 Years Later." Jet. Johnson Publishing Company. September 19, 2005. Vol. 108, No. 12. ISSN 0021-5996. Retrieved from Google Books on July 4, 2010.
  6. 1 2 Tobler, John (1992). NME Rock 'N' Roll Years (1st ed.). London: Reed International Books Ltd. p. 239. CN 5585.
  7. ↑ Wiggins, David K. (26 March 2015). African Americans in Sports. Routledge. p. 401. ISBN 978-1-317-47744-0.
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