Mississippi Trial, 1955

by Chris Crowe

  That night after dinner I walked over to the bridge, hoping to see Naomi. Nobody was around when I got there, so I stood at our favorite spot and leaned over the railing to watch the Yazoo flow underneath me. Where the bridge lights reflected off the water, I could see the swirls and sticks, clear signs that the current was moving downstream, but where the shadow of the bridge fell, I saw only black, like the river was pouring into a bottomless pit that swallowed up all the water that came its way. I kicked some pebbles between the railing down into the shadows but didn’t hear or see any sign that they’d broken the water’s surface. The old river kept on moving into the blackness under the bridge, taking with it whatever happened to be along for the ride.

  Being with Naomi would’ve helped, because I had decided that if she asked me again to promise I wouldn’t say anything in court, I’d promise. I’d promise her I’d run away from that subpoena and never go near the Sumner courthouse, promise her I’d go home to Arizona on the next train, promise her that I’d be back to see her the following summer and every summer after that.

  An hour passed. I walked from one end of the bridge to the other. I tossed a few rocks over the side. I counted bars in the railing. I looked for shooting stars. I listed all the reasons why I shouldn’t have anything to do with that trial.

  Naomi never showed up that night, and I was left alone with nothing but my own conscience to help me decide what to do. Right then I wished I was back in Tempe. I wished I had never come to Greenwood, never gotten mixed up with R.C. or Emmett or any of this mess.

  One of the last things Mom had said to me on the phone was: “Remember who you are, Hiram, and remember to do what’s right.”

  Who was I?

  Hiram Hillburn, a kid from Arizona. Son to an English professor who hated everything about the South, grandson to a gentleman farmer who loved everything about it. Both men had heads harder than cement, and both charged ahead full speed with whatever they thought was right. What they had in common is what kept them apart.

  Mr. Paul had told me to use my head, so I started stacking up the positives against the negatives. I knew I could get out of the trial if I really wanted to. Sheriff Smith already had his hands full, and I could slip out of town and he probably wouldn’t bother to do a thing about it. The paper had made it pretty clear that both the defense and the prosecution had already lined up witnesses, and neither one had talked to me yet, so I probably wasn’t in either side’s game plan. And the sooner I left Greenwood, the sooner I’d be back in school, the less homework I’d have to make up. And I could start smoothing things out with Dad.

  If I stuck around for the trial, I’d be wasting my time. I’d be in the way. Nothing would get accomplished. Nothing would get changed.

  The positives outweighed the negatives by a ton. Now all I had to do was go home and call Mom and Dad to tell them I was coming home as soon as I could. Everybody would be glad: me, Grampa, Naomi, R.C. and his buddies, Mom, and probably even Dad. So it was settled: I’d run away from the trial.

  But it wasn’t settled. That knot in my stomach didn’t go away; it got worse, almost making me want to puke over the bridge rail. All the positives in the world couldn’t fool me. I knew what was right, and I knew if I was going to do what was right, I had to show up at the trial and if asked, tell everything I knew. A boy—a boy I knew—had been kidnapped and murdered. And I knew who did it, at least I knew one of the people who had a part in it. Nothing would bring Emmett back to life, but the trial of his killers might be the start of things, might be a small step to making life for Negroes in the South—heck, in the whole United States—a little better. If nothing else, it might make me feel a little better.

  I was Hiram Hillburn, and I knew what I was going to do: I was going to do what was right.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Tallahatchie County Courthouse sits smack in the middle of the town square of Sumner, a little town north of Greenwood, and you can tell that when it was built, people figured it had to last till doomsday. The building is three stories of solid brick with long windows on the first and second floors that have solid steel shutters that could be closed in case of atomic bomb blasts, riots, or invasion. Shops and a handful of cafés surround the courthouse. The rest of Sumner isn’t much more than a few streets lined with the small houses of townspeople and retired farmers.

  Early Monday morning, Grampa and I drove up to Sumner. We were both bleary-eyed and quiet because we’d been up late Sunday night arguing about whether or not I should tell everything if I got called on to testify. Around midnight when Grampa finally realized I wasn’t going to change my mind, he swore softly and said, “You’re getting to be more like your daddy every day.”

  “And like you,” I said. “I’m like Dad and like you. Stubbornness runs deep in Hillburns.”

  Grampa shook his head without smiling. “Well, then, Hiram Hillburn, we better be getting ourselves to bed. You may be going to that trial, but you’re not going alone, and if we don’t leave early, we’ll end up parking in Webb and hiking the last two miles to Sumner.

  “You sure you want to do this, son?” he asked before I went upstairs.

  “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got no choice,” I said.

  The morning air felt hot and heavy, more like August than September, and low, thick clouds dotted the Delta sky. Outside of Greenwood, the sun cast patches of light and shadows across the cotton fields revealing a thin gray mist, unstirred by morning breezes, that clung to the tops of the cotton plants.

  For most of the way up Highway 49 into Tallahatchie County, Grampa sat like a man going to his own funeral. I couldn’t tell if he was tired or mad; I didn’t feel like talking to him, so I just concentrated on keeping the old pickup headed north.

  The highway started filling up with traffic before we even got to Webb, and by the time we made it to the little cotton gin town outside of Sumner, we were backed up behind a long line of cars headed for the trial. “Knew there’d be a herd of people coming to this,” Grampa muttered.

  As we got closer to Sumner, Grampa got more and more uncomfortable. He kept shifting in his seat, rolling his window up, then down again, turning around to look at the cars behind us. At one point he blew air out of his mouth and said, “You know, Hiram, neither one of us got any business being here. We could be setting in the comfort of our home enjoying Ruthanne’s fine breakfast. Instead, we’re up here in this, this . . . mob.”

  When we finally reached the edge of town, the streets around the courthouse were so crowded that the local sheriff had blocked off the town square and was directing cars to the side streets beyond the square. Grampa, swearing and slapping his hand on the dashboard every time traffic got too tight, directed me to a back street a couple blocks from the square. We parked across a bayou east of the courthouse and walked over the bayou bridge and into the crowd waiting for the trial to begin.

  From the sounds of their voices, I could tell most of them were local people, but on one corner of the square an NBC-TV camera had been set up; scattered through the crowd, reporters and photographers were talking to people and snapping flash photographs. Everyone near us was white, but closer to the front of the courthouse a large group of Negroes gathered in the street kitty-corner from the entrance, and even though the streets around the town square were packed with people standing shoulder to shoulder, a clear space separated the Negroes from everyone else.

  Around eight o’clock a heavy policeman came out of the main doors and stood on the steps, looking over the crowd. When he spotted the Negroes, he lifted a bullhorn to his mouth and started talking in their direction.

  “Listen here. Listen here! Let me have ya’ll’s attention.” The crowd quieted down. “I’m H. C. Strider, sheriff of Tallahatchie County, and I’m under the direction of Judge Curtis L. Swango to make sure things stay orderly. Ya’ll been waiting a while, and you’re gonna be waiting a little more yet. We can’t sit but about three hundred people in the courtroom, so the judge wants f
amily and subpoenaed witnesses to enter first. Then the press—if you’ve got proper credentials. After that, it’s first come, first serve. Coloreds come last, of course. We got three benches for them set up in back.” He looked at the group of Negroes and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t want no trouble here, won’t tolerate none.” Then to the main crowd he said, “All right, folks, we’ll be opening the doors shortly,” and stepped back inside, closing the doors behind him.

  The crowd swelled forward moments later when two deputies opened the doors. “Ya’ll hold on now,” shouted one. “Family and subpoenaed witnesses first. Step on back and let ’em get up here.” People grumbled but let us through. Two women with some young children went in first, then some white men, each holding up his subpoena for the deputy. One of the deputies checked my subpoena and let me and Grampa in. Five or six Negroes came in after us, heads down, trying to look invisible.

  When we were all inside, a deputy led us upstairs to the courtroom and searched everyone before we could go in. The deputy told me and Grampa to sit up front on the right side of the room; it’d be a good place to see everything and they’d know where to find me if they wanted me to testify.

  Trial hadn’t even started, but the room felt like an oven, and as people came in behind us, they started fanning themselves right away. By 9:00 A.M., the courtroom was packed. All the regular seats were taken, so deputies brought in more chairs to line the aisles and the walls. Three wooden benches were pushed up near the back, and when the room looked packed enough to explode, a deputy led a group of Negroes in and directed them to sit there. The benches filled up fast, and those who didn’t get a seat had to stand outside in the hallway.

  When it looked like everyone who was going to get a seat had one, there was a commotion outside the courtroom door. Somebody said, “I’m Charles C. Diggs, elected congressman from the state of Michigan, and I insist on being given a seat in the courtroom.” He argued with somebody for a moment, and then a deputy stuck his head in the doorway and called to an officer inside the courtroom, “There’s a nigger here who says he’s a congressman.”

  “A nigger congressman?”

  “That’s what this nigger said.”

  The deputy laughed. “Hell, that ain’t even legal.”

  A Negro man in a dark suit appeared in the doorway and flashed something from his wallet to one of the deputies, who looked at it a moment, shook his head, and pointed to the benches inside the door. “Set over there with the other niggers, and don’t give us no more trouble.”

  I’d expected the courtroom to be quiet and serious, like a church, but the crowd buzzed like they were waiting for a carnival to start. A few people smoked cigarettes, and some, only the white people, sipped ice water the deputies had brought in. The Negroes talked quietly among themselves. Grampa guessed about 300 people were sitting there waiting for the trial to begin; I counted only thirty-five Negroes, and most of them looked like they’d rather be anywhere but sitting in a hostile courtroom.

  That first day of the trial wasn’t a trial at all. We just sat and watched the district attorney, Gerald Chatham, and his assistant argue with the defense lawyers over who’d be on the jury. The main lawyer for Bryant and Milam was J. J. Breland, an attorney from Sumner who Grampa knew from some previous dealings. “Good man,” Grampa said. “Knows the law inside and out, and he’s a Southerner born and bred.” He had a whole army of assistants, Mr. Carlton, Mr. Kellum, and a few more that Grampa didn’t know.

  Mr. Chatham started the questioning by announcing to everyone, “This case has received wide publicity. The state is going to take every precaution to see that we have a fair and impartial jury.” Most everybody nodded, but I heard some people whisper and chuckle, and when they did, Judge Swango was on them like a rattlesnake. He banged his gavel on his desk and said, plenty loud, “We’ll have none of that here—not today, not until this trial’s over. You people who can’t be respectful of the law might just as well leave now, because if I hear any more nonsense, I’ll have the bailiff throw you out.”

  The room got quiet right away, and Mr. Chatham waited before talking. He looked at the judge and then at the men waiting to be interviewed and said, “I’m not going to give the prospective jurors a chance to disqualify themselves because they don’t believe in a death sentence,” and as soon as he said it, almost everyone in the room started talking while Judge Swango banged his gavel again. It took a minute or two, but as soon as it was quiet again, Mr. Chatham cleared his voice and said, “The state will not seek the death penalty in this case.” Grampa didn’t look surprised at all, but I couldn’t believe it. No death penalty for kidnapping and murder? What kind of trial was this going to be?

  Then the interviews began. As a prospective juror stood to be questioned, Mr. Chatham asked the same things over and over: “Would you be prejudiced because of race? Did you contribute to the fund for the defense, or would you contribute if you were asked to?”

  Mr. Breland had his own set of questions for each man. “There’s been a whole lot of publicity about the alleged events regarding this Emmett Till boy. Will you let that in any way influence you?” If the man said no, Mr. Breland then asked, “If you decide to convict, will you be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the dead body found in the river was the body of Emmett Louis Till?”

  The whole time the questioning was going on, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam sat at a wooden table in the front of the courtroom. Milam, a big man who was mostly bald, looked about ten years older than Bryant. They each had one of their little sons on their laps, and when one of the boys got fussy, they’d hand him over their shoulder to their wives, who sat in the row of chairs just behind them. Watching them sit there playing with their sons, reading the paper, smoking, or drinking a Coke, I never would have guessed they were on trial for murder. Once in a while they’d talk to each other or point out something in the newspaper they had spread on the table in front of them, but neither one ever said anything to their lawyers or paid any attention to what was going on.

  After a couple hours of watching both sides interview white men for the jury, Grampa leaned over and nudged me. “J.J. really knows how to work the law, doesn’t he? That old Chatham doesn’t have a chance, not one chance in hell.”

  “You think he’s ever going to interview any women?”

  “Women can’t be on juries in Mississippi,” Grampa said.

  “What about Negroes?”

  “You’ve got to be a registered voter to be called into a jury pool, and Negroes don’t like to vote in the Delta, so none of them ever bother to register.”

  “Why don’t they want to vote?”

  Grampa answered without looking at me. “That’s just the way things are down here.”

  During the noon recess Grampa bought me lunch at a crowded café across the street from the courthouse. Neither one of us had eaten breakfast, so we inhaled the chicken salad sandwiches and potato chips Grampa ordered. After we each had a piece of pie, Grampa leaned back and sighed. “I can’t help but feel like we’re wasting our time up here, Hiram. Chatham’s not cooperating at all. If he’d just go along with J. J. Breland, they’d have had that jury picked and seated before lunch.” He looked at me carefully. “You still sure you want to stick around for all this?”

  I wondered that myself. At the rate the morning had gone, this trial might last for weeks, and I wasn’t sure how long I wanted to sit there sweating about being called up to testify. But when I thought about what had happened to Emmett Till, that old Hillburn stubbornness kicked in. “I’m staying until the trial’s over, but you don’t have to come back, Grampa. There’s no good reason for you to be here.”

  He pulled out his wallet to pay for lunch. “I got my reasons,” he said. And under his breath he muttered, “Too many damn reasons for my own good.”

  Grampa’s reaction surprised me. I had thought that all his fuss about me being at the trial was because he was worried about me, but now I wasn’t sure why he didn’t want me m
ixed up in the trial.

  On the way out of the café, Grampa stuffed a few dollar bills into a fruit jar labeled “Bryant and Milam Defense Fund: Contributions Welcome” on a table by the door.

  The jar overflowed with money.

  When settled into our courtroom seats Tuesday morning, we figured to see the jury selection get finished and the trial begin. We hadn’t been sitting very long when there was some talking and moving out in the hallway. A moment later a well-dressed Negro woman about Mom’s age came in, and the Negro congressman and another man led her to the benches in the back. When the Negroes sitting there saw her, they all stood up, and a few women hugged her and some others started crying.

  “The nigger boy’s mama,” someone said. “Come down from Chicago.” It didn’t take long for the word to spread around the courtroom, and pretty soon white people were turning around in their seats staring at her, mean, hateful stares.