After the first primary election on August 2, Mississippi’s race for the governorship narrowed to two candidates. Paul B. Johnson and J. P. Coleman battled it out for the next three weeks, and on August 23, Coleman won.27 “The five candidates for governor of Mississippi and the newspapers of the state had a field day this summer using the Negro, the C.I.O., the Supreme Court, the NAACP, Communists, intermarriage, and other topics as whipping boys in the election race,” noted a September 1955 NAACP press release summarizing the campaign soon after the election. “Race hatred was whipped to fever pitch in the scramble for votes.”28
Perhaps the most outspoken southerner to rail against Brown was Judge Tom P. Brady, who predicted dire consequences and a weakened white world as a result of desegregation. In his book, Black Monday, which appeared immediately after the Supreme Court decision, he predicted that “the fulminate which will discharge the blast will be the young negro schoolboy, or veteran, who has no conception of the difference between a mark and a fathom.” Writing thirteen months before Emmett’s trip to the Delta, Brady’s words became eerily prophetic as he described how this explosion would occur: “The supercilious, glib young negro, who has sojourned in Chicago or New York, and who considers the council of his elders archaic, will perform an obscene act, or make an obscene remark, or a vile overture or assault upon some white girl.”29 Such was the climate and level of fear at the time Emmett Till went south from Chicago in August 1955.
Emmett likely did not hear about nor would he have cared about the heated issues that had turned the South against the Supreme Court of the United States. He would have noticed that Mississippi was nothing like Chicago, but for reasons other than race, and they no doubt appealed to him. Emmett loved the outdoors, and nothing in Chicago compared to the open space and inviting adventure of the Mississippi Delta. The fifteen-mile region around Money alone boasted several lakes and streams, all excellent for fishing.30 Yet Emmett was still a city boy, unfamiliar with country living. The farm animals, most of which served to provide for the subsistence living the Wright family was accustomed to, became nothing less than pets to Emmett. “He would buy peanuts and feed them to the chickens, saying they were hungry,” explained Mose Wright.31
After Emmett Till and Wheeler Parker arrived in Mississippi on Saturday afternoon, August 20, they spent most of the evening talking with their cousins, and even stayed home from church the following day. It was the last weekend before the cotton harvest began, and starting early Monday, everyone in the family, including Emmett, was to work in the fields. However, the weather was so hot that they only labored half of each day. “Daddy couldn’t take the heat,” recalled Simeon, “and he wasn’t going to send us out in it.” Emmett did not take to the cotton fields at all and spent most of the time around the house helping his aunt Elizabeth with her chores.32
After finishing their work in the fields, the boys spent the second half of their day playing together. Across the road, they swam in Lake Never Fail, competing about who could dive to the bottom. Those who claimed to go all the way had to prove it by bringing up handfuls of mud. Once they even raided a neighbor’s watermelon patch.33 One night out by the church, Maurice Wright and a neighbor boy hoped to create some mischief with Parker and a teenage girl by trying to coax the two of them into the car to “hook up.” However, Maurice said that Emmett had his eye on the local eighteen-year-old.34 Emmett showed off his own mischievous side sometime during the week by buying firecrackers and lighting them in the street, an unlawful act in the city limits.35
On August 23, J. P. Coleman won the Mississippi governorship by carrying sixty-four counties.36 Emmett may have heard talk about the heated race and landslide victory, but he likely paid little attention. The next day, Wednesday, August 24, as Coleman’s win was headline news throughout the state, Emmett, Parker, and the Wright boys once again picked cotton in the morning and early afternoon.37 That evening, Maurice drove his parents to a service at the tiny East Money Church of God in Christ.38 Because Maurice did not have a driver’s license, the boys were supposed to venture out no farther than the country store nearby. Without permission, however, they decided to drive into Money, three miles away.39 The group consisted of Emmett; brothers Maurice and Simeon Wright; Wheeler Parker; Roosevelt Crawford and his niece, Ruth; and Wheeler’s cousin, Thelton “Pete” Parker.40 Elizabeth had already warned her sons not to take Emmett into Money, knowing that locals would not appreciate his northern manners or fun-loving personality. Despite his mother’s instructions, admitted Maurice later, “we went down [anyway].”41
The events that unfolded over a twenty-minute visit into Money that evening would shortly bring Emmett Till and those with him out of obscurity and into an international spotlight.42 Exactly what transpired that evening, however, has been the subject of much debate, faulty memory, and even wishful thinking. Therefore, an examination of the sources is crucial in order to piece together the controversial story and set aside fact from fiction. The earliest accounts appeared in newspapers and were based on interviews with some of Emmett’s cousins who were with him that night. Others came from statements made by Mose Wright and local law officers. Most were dictated or published within a few days of the incident. In some cases, witnesses talked to multiple journalists.
Wheeler Parker returned to Chicago on Monday, August 29, just five days after the youths took their trip into downtown Money.43 After his arrival home, he talked to reporters from the Chicago Daily Tribune, the Chicago American, and two black weeklies, the Chicago Defender and Jet magazine. Parker told the Chicago American on September 1 that at 8:00 P.M. on Wednesday, August 24, the group drove into Money. The town’s business district consisted of a few stores, a post office, and a cotton gin, all lined on one street. At first they tried to visit a café but discovered that it was closed. As they began to head home, Maurice noticed a checkers game in progress in front of the Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market and wanted to join in.44
Maurice parked the car between the store and the Ben Roy filling station to the south, and everyone walked over to the group already gathered outside the two-story brick building.45 It was not unusual for local blacks to congregate in front of Bryant’s, even though the store was owned by a white couple. In fact, Roy and Carolyn Bryant catered mainly to a black clientele—field workers who regularly purchased supplies and refreshments on credit.46 Twenty-one-year-old Carolyn was working behind the counter that evening. In the back of the store, in the cramped living quarters, her sister-in-law, Juanita Milam, was tending to her two boys and the two belonging to the Bryants. Although Juanita later denied that she was there, circumstantial evidence suggests that she probably was.47
Wheeler Parker told the Tribune on August 30 about something that happened outside the store that set the events of the evening into motion. “One of the other boys told Emmett there was a pretty lady in the store and that he should go in and see her.”48 Parker does not say what, if anything, Emmett may have said to prompt this boy to tease Emmett this way, but a few months later, a reporter named William Bradford Huie, claiming to have interviewed Emmett’s cousins, said that Emmett had been showing off a picture of a white girl and claimed that she was his girlfriend. This prompted someone present to dare Emmett to go inside the store and ask Bryant for a date.49
None of the witnesses who were interviewed in the days after the event mentioned anything about Emmett showing a photo, or that anyone had dared Till to say anything to Bryant. Roosevelt Crawford had been part of the group that drove to town and was standing with the others outside the store. His recollections agree with Huie’s, although his first public statement about what happened came nearly fifty years later. He said that Emmett took a photograph of a white girl out of his wallet and that “several of the group” dared Emmett to say something to the woman inside the store.50 There is no reason to necessarily doubt Crawford, but because his reminiscence is so late it is possible that his memory about the photo was shaped by what he eventually read in
the Huie account. However, years after the incident, Mamie Bradley acknowledged that her son had possessed a photo of a white girl but insisted that it came with the wallet and was actually a picture of actress Heddy Lamar.51
Whether or not Emmett carried this photo, the argument that he boasted about relationships with white girls was independently strengthened just after the release of the Huie piece. A series of articles critical of Huie but sympathetic to Emmett Till appeared in the California Eagle, a black weekly, beginning in late January 1956. The reporter, using the pseudonym Amos Dixon, based his version of events on the investigation of civil rights activist Dr. T. R. M. Howard. Through his own questioning of the youth present that night, Howard learned that Emmett claimed outside the store to have gone to school with white girls and even dated them.52
Whatever the catalyst, there is no question that an unidentified boy urged Emmett to go inside the store to at least look at Carolyn Bryant, because three other reporters who independently spoke with Wheeler Parker in Chicago confirmed what Parker said to the Tribune, thus eliminating any chance that he was misquoted. In the September 1 Chicago American, reporter George Murray summarized his interview with Parker. After Maurice Wright began playing checkers in front of the store, “somebody mentioned the pretty storekeeper, Mrs. Bryant. Till entered the store to see if she was as pretty as they said.”53 Then, in the September 10 issue of the Chicago Defender, reporters Mattie Smith Colin and Robert Elliott wrote, based on their interview with Parker, that “Bo had gone into the store at the urging of one of several companions to ‘look at the pretty lady’ behind the counter and to buy some bubble gum.” This account added, “According to Parker’s description of the incident at the store, Bo went in at the urging of an older boy.”54 Finally, in an interview published in Jet, Parker told reporters from that publication, “We’d gone into town Wednesday and were watching some boys playing checkers in front of the store. Somebody said there was ‘a pretty lady’ in the store and Bobo said he was going inside to buy some bubble gum.”55
Before Emmett’s curiosity drove him into the store, Maurice Wright warned him to be careful about what he said inside.56 After he entered, Emmett briefly remained alone with Carolyn Bryant. The early reports are somewhat contradictory about what happened next, but this may simply be due to reporter error. Some versions suggest that Emmett acted out of line, but they are silent as to what he may have done. An account published on August 29 reports that Emmett began acting “rowdy” and was then taken out of the store.57 Wheeler Parker was quoted within a week of the incident as saying, “I never went in the store [to check on Till]. But when I heard there was trouble, I sent one of the other boys in to get Emmett.”58
Parker did not identify what this trouble was, neither does he name the boy who went in to remove his cousin, but one name did shortly surface. William Sorrels, writing for the Memphis Commercial Appeal twelve days after the incident, said the person who intervened was twenty-year-old Albert Johnson Jr., of nearby Schlater. Sorrels learned that Johnson entered the store, “grabbed Till by the shoulder and made him come out.” This is the only time that Johnson’s first name appears in any source, although Mose Wright said a few days later that “all the boys went along” to the Bryant store that night, “together with a Johnson boy from Slarghter [Schlater].” When asked about Johnson in 2007, Wheeler Parker could not recall if Johnson was there, but he remembered he was a local youth. Sorrels learned the name of the young man from Maurice Wright, which makes Johnson an intriguing yet elusive player in the events of the evening.59
Other accounts indicate that Parker sent someone in to remove Emmett, but that he did so in order to avoid trouble, not stop it. However, Parker was unclear on that point when talking to a different reporter: “After Emmett went in I became worried and I sent another boy to call him out.”60 Leflore County deputy sheriff John Cothran said that after Emmett entered the store, “one of the other boys was worried about him being in there, and went in to get him.” The concern was that “Till would say ‘yeah’ and ‘no’ to [the woman] and not say ‘ma’am.’”61 Cothran’s statement would indicate that the step to remove Emmett was a precautionary one.
T. R. M. Howard, whose previously mentioned investigation was reported in the California Eagle, provided details to another author, Olive Arnold Adams. Through interviews, Howard learned that Simeon Wright, one of those with Emmett Till that night, “went with Emmett to the door and waited outside the door while Emmett made the purchase and put the money, in the exact amount, on the counter.”62 If Simeon did not go inside yet saw the transaction, this would indicate that the front door remained open (although the screen doors would have remained shut), which makes sense because the weather was hot and the store would not have had air conditioning. Wright, however, has told his story publicly on numerous occasions and maintains that he did go inside to check on Emmett (yet he said he did so at the behest of his brother, Maurice, not Parker). “I went in right behind Till to make sure he didn’t get out of line. I was waiting,” he insists.63 Wright clarified on other occasions that he entered the store after Till but did not do so immediately, estimating that Till may have been alone with Carolyn Bryant for about a minute. “What he said, if anything, before I came in I don’t know.”64
Carolyn Bryant’s version about her moments alone with Emmett Till evolved until they painted a malicious and, from a southern white perspective, perverse picture of Till. Nine days after the incident, on September 2, she detailed a relatively mild account to attorneys:
Wednesday Aug. 24 ^about 7:30 or 8 P.M. (dark)^ boy came to candy counter & I waited on him & when I went to take money he grabbed my hand & said [“]how about a date[”] and I walked away from him and he said “what’s the matter Baby can’t you take it?[”] He went out door and said “Goodbye” and I went out to car & got pistol and when I came back he whistled at me—this whistle while I was going after pistol—didn’t do anything further after he saw pistol.
For reasons she could not determine, a “boy from outside came in—he went out with him—don’t know whether he asked him to come out.”65
Twenty days later when she testified in court, she again avoided calling Emmett Till by name but this time referred to him as a “negro man” who came into the store. This time, when she held out her hand for him to pay for his purchase, he grabbed it firmly before asking for the date. She jerked free, turned to go to the back of the store, but the man caught her by the cash register and placed his hands on her waist. “What’s the matter, baby? Can’t you take it? You needn’t be afraid of me.” She said he then bragged that he had been “with white women before.” At that point, “this other nigger came in the store and got him by the arm . . . then he told him to come on and let’s go.”66
Many of the details of Carolyn Bryant’s story were called into question immediately after she told them, even to those unaware that she had initially told her attorneys something different. While she was consistent with Maurice Wright’s account to reporter Sorrels that another boy went into the store, grabbed Emmett, and escorted him out, no one present mentioned the aggressive actions that Carolyn Bryant attributed to Emmett in court. Admittedly, however, none of them would have been in the store to witness what did or did not happen anyway. But Leflore County sheriff George Smith spoke to the press a few days after the incident and noted only minor indiscretions. “The Bryants were said to have become offended when young Till waved to the woman and said ‘goodbye’ when he left the store,” Smith reported.67 Two days after that, Smith elaborated, saying that “Till made an ugly remark to Mrs. Bryant.”68 This was likely a reference to Till’s asking Bryant for a date.
In 2004, however, Carolyn Bryant held to the embellished version of the story when talking to the FBI, saying that when Till touched her she kept screaming for Juanita Milam to help her. Yet in what is perhaps the most important development in Bryant’s story, in 2010 she admitted to the historian Timothy B. Tyson that the forceful behavior that
she had attributed to Till inside of the store was false and that she relayed a story concocted by Bryant family members and her attorneys.69
What happened next occurred outside in front of several witnesses. Maurice Wright echoed Sheriff Smith that as Emmett left the store, he waved and said “Good-bye” to the woman—not “Good-bye ma’am,” which, minus the wave, would have gone unnoticed. Bryant then walked out of the store and toward a car. In that instant, Emmett blew “what some people call a wolf whistle.”70 Parker, in talking to Jet reporters, agreed with Maurice but said that Till whistled before Bryant went to her car: “After a while, we went in and got Bobo but he stopped in the doorway and whistled at the lady. She got angry and followed us out, then ran toward a car. Someone hollered, ‘She’s getting a gun’ and we ran.” Maurice confirmed the gun story as well.71 To the Chicago American, Parker added one more detail: “After he whistled and the lady got mad, some of the local boys told us we’d better get out of town fast.” Emmett and the others then jumped into the car and left.72
Simeon Wright, who shortly after talked with reporter Clark Porteous, echoed Maurice. Carolyn Bryant followed Emmett to the door; at that point, Emmett gave a “wolf whistle,” which Simeon demonstrated for Porteous.73 Wheeler Parker and Maurice Wright elaborated on this to other reporters as well. On September 1, Parker told a Chicago newsman about “the wolf call he [Emmett] whistled at a pretty . . . white lady in a store last Wednesday.”74 Maurice explained to William Sorrels that “I was outside and I heard him [Emmett] whistle at the lady (Mrs. Bryant). It was a wolf whistle. When he came out of the store I told him, ‘Boy, you know better than that,’ and he just laughed.”75
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