Emmett Till

by Devery S. Anderson

  White animosity toward blacks in post–World War II Chicago was generally rooted in these housing conflicts. The slippery slope had begun there, some argued, and would flow rapidly to the South should there be a conviction in the Till trial. Consequently, northern whites began to feel for their southern counterparts. To balance that, the Till case also triggered an unprecedented degree of empathy by African Americans living in the North toward those of their own race struggling under Jim Crow in the South.13

  Angry Chicago whites saw themselves as victims in a city that was once theirs, with their status diminished and their rights in jeopardy. Under these circumstances, some did all they could to persuade Mississippi officials not to convict Milam and Bryant. One Chicagoan pleaded to Gerald Chatham “not [to] let this bunch of racketeers and cowardly bluffers in Chicago, or anywhere else intimidate you in the least about the killing of that dirty nigger. He probably got what he had coming.” People in the North were too afraid to convict blacks of their crimes, the letter-writer insisted, and newspapers were scared even to point out when a criminal was black. In one case in particular, “only by seeing his picture in the paper would any one know it was a negrow [sic] that killed that little eight year old girl here a few weeks ago.” This was a reference to the July 4 murder of Mary Manzo by seventeen-year-old Clarence Baugh. Baugh was convicted of the crime a few months later in December 1955. “Please maintain your good old southern tradition in this case of the disappearance of the Chicago nigger. The south will some day have to defend these cowards here against their lovable negroews [sic].”14

  Another wrote of his abhorrence in regularly seeing “a nigger and some white trash walking arm in arm and living together. Do you want that to happen in your state?” In Chicago, the writer claimed, whites have no rights and are forced to “ride with a nigger, eat with a nigger and often live in the same house with a nigger and cant [sic] complain.” The Supreme Court and the NAACP together were trying to create a nation of mulattos. The real issue, however, was clear: “Convict those two white men and every nigger in Mississippi will think that it is open season on white women and there will be nothing you will be able to do about it for you will have set a PRECEDENT.” Once again, this would lead to a slippery slope. “From there on there is no stopping, next mixing children in schools, then intermarriage and eventually a race of mulattos in the United States—Remember God did not make a mulatto.” There was only one way to stop it:

  I believe the two defendants Bryant and Milam, if they did what they are accused of might have been a little rough, but rough tactics were required. Because if that nigger got away with it, word would spread around fast and there would be no stopping the niggers. A thing like that must be stopped right away for once it gets rolling there is no stopping, And if that nigger got away with it, his friends would do the same thing the next time they came to town and every white woman would have to [comply] or cause a race riot.15

  The guilt or innocence of the defendants was not an issue for these outraged citizens. A conviction of these men, they feared, would forever keep southern white women unsafe from ravenous black brutes. If the gruesome murder of Emmett Till was, admittedly, “a little rough,” then that was a necessary evil to maintain southern traditions. Equating the fourteen-year-old from Chicago with the mythical black beast rapist, which in times past had frequently set off the fury of lynch mobs, created the rationale many clung to in justifying an acquittal.

  Most white Mississippians would have distanced themselves from such extreme views, but at the same time they were becoming increasingly sympathetic toward Milam and Bryant because they were angered by outside interference in the case. Yet such interference was more perception than reality. For example, a week after the indictments, Mississippi governor Hugh White wrote to a friend, despairing that “there has never been as much meddling in any case as the Till case, and I am afraid that the public has become so aroused over the NAACP agitation that it will be impossible to convict these men.”16 It is true that upon the discovery of Till’s body, NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins made scathing remarks against Governor White and the state, and, understandably, most white Mississippians took offense. But since his August 31 statements, Wilkins had lain low. If NAACP agitation seemed continuous, it was only because journalists in Mississippi kept those earlier condemnations stirring in the minds of their readers.17

  That said, most white Mississippians likely viewed any comments by northern blacks with an affiliation with the NAACP as coming from that organization—warranted or not—and when that is considered, there was more for them to stew about. William Henry Huff, Mamie Bradley’s legal counsel, was an NAACP attorney, which may have overshadowed his role as Mamie’s adviser in the eyes of white Mississippians. On September 7, Huff announced his intention to file a $100,000 damage suit against Milam and Bryant should a jury fail to convict and sentence them to death in the gas chamber.18 Surely this put white Mississippians on the defensive. If the Till case was only a local matter, as they believed, then they must have wondered what business Huff had in talking about lawsuits or questioning a jury’s decision at all. Or worse, what right did he have to use it as a springboard for further action? A few days later, NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, who had argued the Brown case before the US Supreme Court the year before, blamed Till’s murder on the prosegregationist Citizens’ Councils born in the wake of that landmark case. There had not been any major racial incidents for some time, he pointed out, but since the emergence of the Citizens’ Councils, three blacks had been murdered in Mississippi.19 For his victory in outlawing segregated schools in the South, Marshall had won few white friends there. If citizens of the Magnolia State wanted to find meddlers, in their minds, they did not have to look very far.

  The narrative most whites would have approved for public consumption regarding their postindictment sentiments came from one of Milam’s and Bryant’s defense attorneys, who affirmed that “the people of this area all regret that this awful thing happened. We don’t condone such actions, but the people here are not convinced that the boys killed the negro boy.”20 Yet any nagging doubts about guilt soon evolved into full support for an acquittal. This can be gauged by public response to a letter to the editor published in the Greenwood Commonwealth the next day, September 8, by local storekeeper A. B. Ainsworth. His letter, addressed “To All White Mississippians,” urged locals to donate money to a fund set up for the defendants. “We should not sit idly down and see these two men railroaded and made the object of the combined forces now working against them in the North.” Ainsworth accused the NAACP, the Urban League, and “various other groups in the North” of raising money to help prosecute the half-brothers, who, being in jail, were unable to earn a living. He encouraged donors to write checks to the Bryant and Milam Defense Fund and mail them to him or drop them off at his store.21

  Money began coming in immediately, which helped the defendants toward the $1,000 still owed for retaining the attorneys. The people of Humphreys County banded together and sent in at least three different collections totaling nearly $300, with a covering letter assuring the defendants that they “wish to express our sympathy to you as we feel our actions would be the same as yours under similar circumstances.” Even the prosecutor who hoped to convict Milam and Bryant received an inquiry from a man in Florence, South Carolina, who wanted to help “the two white men who have been indited [sic] by the Grand Jury in your county for defending their home and the purity of their white womanhood against the insult of an arrogant negro. Some of us in this community would like to contribute a small amount, largely as a token, to the defense fund for these boys.” Chatham passed the letter on to the defense attorneys.22

  Five days after starting the fund, Ainsworth boasted that the drive had been successful, although he declined to say how much money had been raised. He scrapped his original plan to open a bank account for the jailed pair, he explained, because most of the donations had been sent directly to their families. A
journalist who came to Sumner to cover the trial recalled in 2006 that he saw money jars for the fund displayed in stores throughout town. After the trial began, the Jackson State Times reported that donations were rumored to have topped $5,000, although that was disputed by the defense.23 Ainsworth’s thinking when initiating the drive, as indicated in his call to “White Mississippians,” reveals that for him and those who supported his cause, the Till case was the latest battle in a southern white war fought simultaneously against influential blacks in the North and any black progress in the South.

  On Wednesday, September 7, Judge Swango scheduled a meeting for the following day for himself and the attorneys to work out the trial date. However, he became ill Thursday and was out of his chambers, but promised to return to court and hold the meeting on Friday. Both the defense and prosecution told the press that they preferred a date within the current term of court.24

  Perhaps it was the fact that her son had been murdered in Mississippi, or maybe she had heard how Tallahatchie County whites were now rallying around Emmett Till’s accused killers, but whatever the reason, Mamie Bradley had mixed emotions about going to the trial. She agreed with her advisers that her presence would aid the prosecution, however, and on Thursday, September 7, attorney Huff announced that Mamie would attend as long as she was “adequately protected” from the time she left Chicago until she returned home. Learning this, Gerald Chatham told the press that he would send Mamie his telegram that day and promised to provide her “any reasonable protection she might feel that she needs.”25

  White Mississippians were certainly bothered by Mamie’s fears and saw them as an extension of her August 31 assessment of Mississippi as a “den of snakes,” where people “will do these things [commit murder] with hardly any provocation.” But Mamie also made enemies in the state for more innocent reasons. One newspaper editor criticized Mamie’s decision from earlier in the month to hold an open-casket funeral for her son and for allowing the NAACP to accept donations at the service. Jimmy Arrington, editor of the Collins Commercial, became convinced that Mamie’s move was motivated primarily by the financial interests of the NAACP. He argued in a September 8 editorial for a federal law prohibiting any public display of dead bodies for the purpose of raising money. Arrington even called upon Mississippi senator James O. Eastland to introduce a bill in Congress to that effect. “Human decency demands such a law and civilized people are entitled to one.” Arrington was only thinking out loud in his small-town paper, yet larger publications, such as the Jackson Daily News, quoted the editorial, giving it statewide attention. There is no evidence that Arrington pushed this idea any further, and none whatsoever that Eastland considered Arrington’s proposal at all, despite Eastland having been a fierce segregationist and hardly a friend to black Mississippians.26

  Although Arrington’s idea died rather quickly, white animosity toward the NAACP did not. A prominent black leader recognized this and tried to ameliorate the situation. In Memphis on Thursday, Dr. Joseph Jackson, president of the National Negro Baptist Convention, introduced a resolution to the 7,000 delegates meeting there to commend Mississippi law enforcement officials for their handling of the Till case. He urged them to “pray that they will continue until their task has been completed.” Proclaiming the vicious Till murder as “worse than a lynching,” however, Jackson called upon whites and blacks all over the country “to discontinue those methods which breed hate and increase tension.” He asked black citizens not to judge the entire state by the actions of just a few. His admonition and counsel were covered in most papers throughout Mississippi.27

  By Friday, September 9, Mamie Bradley had also become more circumspect in her comments. In fairness, her harshest criticisms of Mississippi were uttered immediately upon learning of her son’s murder. Speaking calmly ten days later, she explained that she was “not bitter against the white people. The color of a person’s skin has never made any difference to me, and it never will. Some of my best friends are among the white race.” She was also touched by the outpouring of support she had received from both black and white Americans. In monetary terms, that amounted to over $4,000 in donations from sympathizers all over the country; to keep that in perspective, her annual salary at the US Air Force was only $3,900. Most of the letters she received were favorable, with only a few “cranks.” If Mississippians began to feel a little sympathy for her after reading these sentiments, it probably diminished quickly by her resolve, announced in the same interview, to become an advocate for civil rights. “I was never much active in working for racial equality,” she said. “Now I’m going to devote all the time I can. This has made me more aware of the problem.”28 To Mississippians committed to maintaining segregation, a declaration of war on Jim Crow would hardly be welcome from anybody, not to mention an outsider, and especially when white citizens wanted to believe that the murder was a simple case of homicide without any racial overtones.29

  Mamie was still apprehensive about attending the trial. On Friday, Huff wrote Chatham to learn more about his plans to protect Mamie once she arrived. “I wish to advise that reasonable protection is not enough. Absolute protection is what is needed,” he insisted. The nationwide coverage the case had received guaranteed that many onlookers would be present at the courthouse. “Some will, of course, be sympathetic, and others will be everything but sympathetic, and some may have the same malignant hearts and desires as those who committed the atrocious act of murdering this mother’s child.” Huff expected Chatham to protect not only Mamie but also local family members and witnesses to the kidnapping, in the event that a large riot broke out where only the few policemen present would be powerless.30 Huff even went beyond Mississippi authorities and sent a copy of the letter to US attorney general Herbert Brownell, whom he had met a week earlier in Chicago. Huff requested that Brownell provide additional protection by the FBI.31

  On Friday, Swango was back in his office and set the trial to begin on Monday, September 19, just ten days away. He also announced that the jury would be appointed from a list of 125 veniremen (later shortened to 120). Because women could not sit on Mississippi juries and no black men were registered to vote anywhere in the county, this would be, as always, a panel of twelve white men.32

  Although many Mississippians had spoken out about the case in their local papers, no one was more forthright than Pulitzer Prize–winning author William Faulkner. A native of Oxford in Lafayette County, Faulkner argued in a September 9 UPI editorial written from Rome, Italy, that the Till murder was not just a local issue. The consequences were so wide that even the survival of America was at stake. Because the white race totaled only one-fourth of the world’s population, he argued, the rest of the world would not tolerate white America’s abuses of its minorities any longer. Would the United States survive another attack like Pearl Harbor if people throughout the world, who differ from its majority, either in skin color or ideology, were aligned against it? Talk about freedom means nothing if it does not include all of humanity, wrote Faulkner impassionedly. His conclusion was powerful and frank:

  Perhaps we will find out now whether we are to survive or not. Perhaps the purpose of this sorry and tragic error committed in my native Mississippi by two white adults on an afflicted Negro child is to prove to us whether or not we deserve to survive.

  Because if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.33

  These were not the ramblings of an outsider, but were thoughtful observations from one of Mississippi’s most celebrated sons. Mississippi officials were about to respond by showing the world that indeed, they meant business. The same day that Faulkner’s letter appeared, Mississippi attorney general and governor-elect J. P. Coleman appointed a special prosecutor at Chatham’s request to aid the state in the trial. This was forty-one-year-old Robert Smith III, a Ripley, Mississippi, attorney and former FBI agent. Smith, a gr
aduate of Ole Miss, had worked for the FBI in Washington, DC, and elsewhere for about two years. He served as a captain in the marines during World War II, and returned to practice law in Ripley with an uncle. He was still in practice at the time of the Till trial.34 Smith and Coleman were friends and “poker buddies.” Smith’s wife was severely tried over the prospect of her husband prosecuting white men for killing a black youth in such a high-profile case. “I think it had really never been done in the State of Mississippi,” said Smith’s son, Jak. However, that mattered little to Robert Smith. Years later, Smith’s former law partner, Bobby Elliott, insisted that Smith “wasn’t afraid of the devil himself. . . . Bobby Smith didn’t know fear.”35

  Gerald Chatham, forty-nine, of Hernando, requested the special prosecutor because ill health limited his ability to fully try the case alone. Chatham was a 1931 graduate of the University of Mississippi law school and was set to retire in January after fourteen years as district attorney. He suffered from high blood pressure, heart trouble, and severe nosebleeds, but if anyone had the heart to try a race case in Mississippi, it was Chatham. “My daddy was a fair man. He loved people,” said his son, also named Gerald. “It didn’t matter about what color your skin was. We were raised to treat everybody alike, everybody equal. That’s just the way he lived his life. He treated those black people with respect. They loved him.”36