JACKSON, Miss.—Priscilla Williams-Till wore a white T-shirt featuring a collage of old black-and-white photos of a young man and his mother as she spoke in front of a crowd in the Mississippi Capitol rotunda about the 1955 murder of her relative, Emmett Till.
She told the crowd of lawmakers, family and friends that she is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Williams-Till said she’s frustrated by Hyde-Smith’s leadership and her approach to issues related to race.
“To bring about justice is to change justice with leadership, and that’s the most important thing that can happen, is you have to show leadership by example,” she said at the press conference on Aug. 28.
Williams-Till, whose distant cousin was the victim of a lynching, said she was also motivated to run partly due to the senator’s 2018 remark about a public hanging.
Hyde-Smith, during a November 2, 2018 campaign event, praised a cattle rancher who had shown up to support her.
“If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row,” she said in the video, first reported by Lamar White, Jr.
The senator later said she apologized “to anyone offended.” The Jackson Free Press reported the same month that her former junior high basketball coach recalled hearing the phrase at the segregation academy that the senator attended in the 1970s.
Hyde-Smith won the Nov. 27, 2018, special runoff election against Democrat Mike Espy, the Black former U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary. Voters then elected her for a regular six-year term over Espy in 2020; her term ends in January 2027.
“We have a sitting person that’s representing the state of Mississippi, like Cindy Hyde-Smith, who made the comment, ‘If I was invited to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.’ And she represents this state,” Williams-Till said at the press conference. “Well, I represent this state, too, and God has directed my path. We will change the hate that’s come out of Mississippi.”
Two white men murdered Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, accused him of whistling at her. He was 14 at the time of his death. An all-white jury found the two white men who were charged with his murder, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, not guilty.
Till’s murder helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, ensured the world saw his battered body and went on to devote her life to the fight for civil rights and against racial injustice.
Priscilla Williams-Till’s campaign website explains the family relationship.
“My Great Grandmother, Ella Smith and Mamie Till’s Grandfather George Smith were sister and brother,” the website says.
Policy Priorities Include Health Care and Criminal Justice Reform
Priscilla Williams-Till is a native of Jackson and a graduate of Lanier Junior Senior High School, Jackson State University and Belhaven University. She said she wants to be a leader in her community and advocate for its needs in Congress.
“My purpose for running for United States Senate (is that) I can influence the legal system by introducing laws that help shape legal interpretation that address systemic injustice, federal investigation into police departments, police reform or even discriminating zoning laws,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 5.
The candidate proposes expanding Medicaid and other health-care programs in Mississippi, though expansion is up to the state Legislature. She said she does not approve of cutting Medicaid services, especially for rural hospitals.
Williams-Till said she had seen firsthand the challenges of a person trying to enroll in marketplace health-care insurance after the government removed them from the Medicaid program. She said some people get flooded with dozens of phone calls from insurers, causing them to get overwhelmed and not understand the various options available.
“We need a system set up to help people get health insurance for the ones who are cut out of Medicaid across the state,” the candidate told the Mississippi Free Press.
When it comes to abortion, Williams-Till said she believes it should be up to women.
“I think people have a right to decide whatever they want to do with their bodies. That’s between them and God. I don’t think any man or woman should dictate to a woman what she should do to her body,” she told the Mississippi Free Press.
But when it comes to transgender athletes, the candidate said she does not approve of transgender people playing on sports teams that align with their gender identities.
“As far as judging one’s sexuality, I’m not on that. I think men should stick to going to men’s restrooms and women should stick to going to women’s restrooms,” Williams-Till told the Mississippi Free Press.
She said she supports the U.S. sending weapons to Israel for its war on Gaza, noting that she does not support Palestinian statehood. On Sept. 1, the world’s leading experts on genocide declared that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Williams-Till said she believes Ukraine “should fend for itself,” but said she supports sending weapons to Ukraine, just as with Israel.
The candidate is part of a growing field hoping to unseat Hyde-Smith. In July, Ty Pinkins, who ran as a Democrat against Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker in 2024, announced that he was leaving the Democratic Party and would run against Hyde-Smith as an independent in 2026. On Sept. 3, Democratic Lowndes County prosecutor Scott Colom announced that he would be running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Hyde-Smith, years after she blocked his nomination to a U.S. district court seat under Biden.
Williams-Till Wants State to Release Emmett Till Case Files
The U.S. Department of Justice released the Emmett Till federal case files on Aug. 22. Priscilla Williams-Till said the DOJ called the Till family on Aug. 18 to give them the records and announce the public release of the files. However, the government redacted much of the information in the records.
Mississippi has not publicly released Till’s state case files. Williams-Till said her family asked the DOJ about the state records and DOJ leadership said the family would have to petition the state to release those files. She said her family has asked the state to release the records.
“What is the State of Mississippi so afraid of in those files that you all will not release pertinent, important information to carry down in history?” Williams-Till asked at the press conference. “It is very important to state facts for the public to be aware of exactly the people that murdered and lynched Emmett.”
She also called for the state to posthumously prosecute Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who accused Emmett Till of whistling at her. Posthumous criminal prosecutions are not legal, however, in the United States, which guarantees the accused the right to be present and defend themselves at trial—something that is impossible for a dead woman. A deceased person’s estate can be held liable in some civil cases, however.
Williams-Till noted Mississippi law enforcement officers had a warrant for Bryant’s arrest in 1955 that they never served; a group of investigators found the warrant in Leflore County in 2022, but a grand jury declined to indict her later that year; Carolyn Bryant died in 2023 at 88.
She said she and others in the Till family have long believed that law enforcement decided not to arrest Bryant because she had young children.
“We heard that Carolyn Bryant’s name was always a part of the warrant, but they chose not to arrest her because she had children and they didn’t want to arrest her. That was always the story that the family had heard,” she said.
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