19 Facts About Louis Till

Louis Till was an African American GI during World War II.

Louis Till was found guilty and was executed by hanging at Aversa.

Louis Till was the estranged father of Emmett Louis Till, whose murder in August 1955 at the age of 14 galvanized the civil rights movement.

The circumstances of Louis Till's death remained largely unknown, until they were revealed after the highly controversial acquittal of his son's murderers 10 years later.

An unrelated 2016 analysis by John Edgar Wideman, using the same case files, suggests Louis Till to be innocent, and theorizes racial bias to be a factor in his guilty verdict, comparing the execution to the murder of Louis Till's son.

At age 17, Louis Till began courting Mamie Carthan, a girl who was a few months older than him.

Louis Till's parents disapproved, thinking the charismatic Till was "too sophisticated" for their daughter.

At her mother's insistence, Mamie broke off their courtship, but the persistent Louis Till won out, and they got married on October 14,1940.

However, they separated in 1942 after Mamie found out that Louis Till had been unfaithful.

Enraged, Louis Till later choked her close to unconsciousness, to which Mamie responded by throwing scalding water at him.

Thomas, the shot that later killed Anna Zanchi had been fired from the M1911 pistol that Louis Till had stolen that morning from the US Navy Serviceman.

Thomas did identify Louis Till as having fired the shot that killed Anna Zanchi.

Louis Till's involvement was only established by the uncorroborated testimony of an alleged accomplice.

Private Louis Till was hanged immediately following his co-defendant Private Fred A McMurray at Aversa on July 2,1945.

The reasons for Louis Till's death were not revealed to his family; Mamie Louis Till's attempts to learn more were comprehensively blocked by the United States Army bureaucracy.

Many of these editorials specifically cited an article in Life Magazine, which presented Louis Till as having been killed in action while fighting for his country in France.

Louis Till, lie buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E, Col.

Louis Till terrorized his wife, terrorized his fellow soldiers and terrorised local Italians who did not cooperate with him.

Wideman examines the trial record and compares it to the trial of Emmett's killers, calling both "a farce", and expresses the belief that the leak of Mr Louis Till's military records during 1955 was an intentional effort to further demonize Emmett Louis Till and retroactively justify the acquittal of his murderers.