‘They just want history to die:’ Owners demand $4 million for crumbling Emmett Till store

The world’s most recognized Emmett Till site is nearing extinction, but the owners all but refuse to sell it, demanding $4 million for what little remains.

They have turned down a free offer to stabilize the decaying building, which in 1955 was Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market where 14-year-old Till supposedly whistled at the white store owner’s wife and then was abducted and killed.

“They just want history to die,” said Sherron Wright, 59, whose great-uncle, Moses Wright, identified Till’s kidnappers at trial. “They just want history erased. I know it’s a sore spot, but at the same time, it can be used as a teaching tool instead of using it for hatred.”

The owners asking for $4 million for the store “is a hostage situation,” she said. “They’re saying, ‘We’re going to hold this building hostage, and once it crumbles, it’s no good to nobody.’”

The store’s owners are the children of the late Ray Tribble, who voted with other jurors to acquit Till’s killers in a 1955 trial.

Dave Tell, author of the upcoming book, “Remembering Emmett Till,” said people have tried for decades to get permission from owners to restore the store and possibly turn it into a civil rights museum.

“There have been seven to 10 efforts to buy the store, and there have been thousands of dollars offered,” he said. “I don’t know why, but every time the process breaks down, it seems the Tribble family is unwilling to let their store be turned into a monument that might suggest the complicity of their patriarch in letting Till’s killers walk free.”

Even after the killers admitted their guilt, Tribble defended his not guilty verdict, claiming the corpse pulled from the river wasn’t Till’s because the body was more than 6 feet tall. (DNA tests have confirmed the body pulled from the river was indeed Till, who was 5-foot-3.)

The Clarion Ledger contacted the owners, who would not comment.

In 2006, local leaders asked the owners for a sale price. The leaders said they were initially told the price was $40 million before it was reduced to $4 million.

Whatever value the store once had has plummeted below $20,000, according to the Leflore County tax assessor’s office.

Tell blamed the loss of value on the Tribble family, who purchased the property in the mid-1980s.

Less than a decade later, the front porch fell down. In 2004, the roof collapsed, and Hurricane Katrina devastated the store a year later.

In the wake of that destruction, the owners vowed to work with local, state and national officials to rebuild the store.

“We want to restore it,” Tribble’s son, Harold Ray Jr., told the Clarion Ledger in 2007. “It’s a part of history, and it’s about to fall down.”

Four years later, Mississippi archives officials awarded a $206,000 grant to restore a structure next to the old Bryant store — Ben Roy’s Service Station, also possessed by the owners.

Archives officials had hoped this award would help pave the way for the owners to cooperate with restoration of the store and perhaps even this tiny town.

But no such restoration took place.

Despite that, the owners are still trying to sell the store for $4 million, including all the property that makes up this tiny village (population under 100), except for Riverside Baptist Church.

Carolyn McAdams, mayor for nearby Greenwood since 2009, said what has happened is baffling.

If she had property she believed was worth $4 million, “I’d get out there with my hammer and saw,” she said. “I’d invest some sweat equity.”

Historical grants are available for funding, but the owners have not taken advantage of those, she said. “There’s not much left there, except for the (historical) marker. It’s real sad.”