Money is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

near Greenwood in

Leflore County Leflore County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 32,317. The county seat is Greenwood. The county is named for Choctaw leader Greenwood LeFlore, who signed a treaty to cede his peo ...

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

, United States, in the

Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo ...

. It has fewer than 100 residents, down from 400 in the early 1950s when a

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Althou ...

operated there. Money is located on a railroad line along the

Tallahatchie River The Tallahatchie River is a river in Mississippi which flows from Tippah County, through Tallahatchie County, to Leflore County, where it joins the Yalobusha River to form the Yazoo River. The river is navigable for about . At Money, Mississi ...

, a tributary of the

Yazoo River The Yazoo River is a river in the U.S. states of Louisiana and Mississippi. It is considered by some to mark the southern boundary of what is called the Mississippi Delta, a broad floodplain that was cultivated for cotton plantations before the ...

in the eastern part of the Mississippi Delta. The community has ZIP code 38945 in the

Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area The Greenwood Micropolitan Statistical Area is a micropolitan area in the northwestern Delta region of Mississippi that covers two counties - Leflore and Carroll. As of the 2000 census, the USA had a population of 48,716 (though a July 1, 2009 ...

. Money is the site of events leading to the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old

Emmett Till Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery ...

by white men, an event that gained nationwide attention. The suspects were acquitted by an

all-white jury Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial ...

in 1955. They sold their story to '' Look'' magazine the next year and admitted their crime in the 1956 interview.

History

This rural area was developed for cotton cultivation. The Money post office was established in 1901. The community was named for

Hernando Money Hernando De Soto Money (August 26, 1839September 18, 1912) was an American politician from the state of Mississippi. Biography Money was born in Holmes County, Mississippi. He was named after the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto. Early in his ...

, a United States Senator from Mississippi.

Murder of Emmett Till

Money became infamous for the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, who was visiting his uncle Moses Wright in August 1955. Till was accused of flirting with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working alone at Bryant's Grocery which she owned with her husband Roy Bryant. In 2007 Bryant said that she had fabricated details of the encounter in her testimony at trial. After the store encounter, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, abducted, tortured, and murdered Till because Carolyn Bryant said that Till had flirted with her, crossing the "color line". The pair were arrested and tried for the murder, but were acquitted by an

. Several months later, they sold their story, and confessed to the killing in an interview with

William Bradford Huie William Bradford Huie (November 13, 1910 – November 20, 1986) was an American writer, investigative reporter, editor, national lecturer, and television host. His credits include twenty-one books that sold over 30 million copies worldwide. In ad ...

that was published in the January 1956 issue of '' Look'' magazine. Till's mother,

Mamie Till Bradley Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley (born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan; November 23, 1921 – January 6, 2003) was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, after accu ...

, insisted on an open casket funeral for her son in Chicago. She wanted people to see that her son had been badly beaten before his death. She allowed news photographs of his body to be published. National awareness was heightened of

lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...

in the South and the oppression and violence against blacks under

Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

. Historians suggest that the Emmett Till murder helped galvanize the civil rights movement by drawing national attention to injustices in the South.

Legacy

A historical marker is at the site of the former Bryant's Grocery Store, as part of the Mississippi Freedom Trail. It notes the influence of Till's murder and the injustice of his killers going free as catalysts for the civil rights movement both nationally and statewide.

In popular culture

A wooden bridge across the

at Money was the focus of

Bobbie Gentry Bobbie Gentry (born Roberta Lee Streeter; July 27, 1942) is a retired American singer-songwriter, who was one of the first female artists in America to compose and produce her own material. Gentry rose to international fame in 1967 with her Sou ...

's 1967 hit song "

Ode to Billie Joe "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title-track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped '' Billboard's'' Pop sin ...

." The November 10, 1967 issue of ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

'' magazine featured a photo of Gentry crossing the bridge. The bridge collapsed in June 1972 after being burned by vandals. It has since been replaced.

Education

It is in the

Greenwood-Leflore School District Greenwood-Leflore Consolidated School District (GLCSD) is a school district serves Greenwood, Mississippi and the rest of Leflore County. It was established on July 1, 2019, as a merger of the Greenwood Public School District and the Leflore Cou ...

. Residents are zoned to

Amanda Elzy High School Amanda Elzy High School (AEHS) is a high school in unincorporated Leflore County, Mississippi, south of Greenwood, and part of the Greenwood-Leflore Consolidated School District. , it had 488 students in grades 9–12 and 36.37 teachers (fu ...

. The town was formerly served by the

Leflore County School District The Leflore County School District (LCSD) was a public school district headquartered in Greenwood, Mississippi, United States. The district served areas in Leflore County outside of the City of Greenwood, including the city of Itta Bena, the town ...

. Effective July 1, 2019 this district consolidated into the Greenwood-Leflore School District.

Notable people

Richard "Hacksaw" Harney Richard "Hacksaw" Harney (July 16, 1902 – December 25, 1973) was an American Delta blues guitarist and pianist. He first entered a recording studio with his brother Maylon in 1928, to wax guitar work backing for separate tracks by Pearl Dicks ...

–

Delta blues Delta blues is one of the earliest-known styles of blues. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, and is regarded as a regional variant of country blues. Guitar and harmonica are its dominant instruments; slide guitar is a hallmark of the s ...

guitarist and pianist *

James Schaffer James Shaffer (February 14, 1910 – March 9, 2014) was an African American religious leader, and pastor who led the Church of Universal Triumph, Dominion of God, Inc. after the death of James F. Jones in 1971. Beginnings James Shaffer was ...

– religious leader and centenarian. *

Willye White Willye Brown White (December 31, 1939 – February 6, 2007) was an American track and field athlete who took part in five Olympics from 1956 to 1972. She was America's best female long jumper of the time and also competed in the 100 meters sprint. ...

– Olympic athlete.

Gallery

File:MoneyMSPostOffice.JPG, Former Money post office File:Bryant's Grocery.jpg, Mississippi Freedom Trail Marker

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Mississippi Unincorporated communities in Leflore County, Mississippi Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area