The Emmett Till murder trial that exposed Mississippi’s unjust racial system to intense national scrutiny and ignited the modern civil rights movement was held in this courthouse. In August 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago, visiting relatives in Leflore County’s Money community, was murdered after offending the proprietors of Money’s Bryant Grocery. Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law, J. W. Milam, abducted, tortured, and killed Till. After Till’s body was found on the Tallahatchie County side of the Tallahatchie River, a Sumner grand jury indicted Bryant and Milam, and the trial took place in the second-floor courtroom. Acquitted by an all-white jury, the defendants accepted money in 1956 from a journalist for their admission that they had indeed murdered Till.
The Romanesque Revival courthouse has a cross-hall plan, round-arched windows and entrances, and a tall corner clock tower. A Confederate monument (1913), a soldier standing on a marble shaft, stands in front. The square, situated between Cassidy Bayou and the abandoned Y&MV Railroad and lined by low-rise brick commercial buildings, remains very much as it was during the trial.