The reporters covering the trial quickly became a Who’s Who of American journalism. In addition to Kilgallen, Wilson, and Kempton was John Popham, of the New York Times; Jim Desmond of the New York Daily News; Bill Minor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune; Clark Porteous of the Memphis Press-Scimitar; Gus Harris of the Detroit News; and Bill Goolrick of Time and Life magazines. Newsmen from the Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Daily News were also present. John Herbers, UPI bureau chief in Jackson, drove up to report on the trial. Younger reporters such as David Halberstam of the West Point Daily Times Leader and Dan Wakefield of the Nation, cut their journalistic teeth in Sumner. The Daily Worker, the paper of the American Communist Party, sent forty-nine-year-old Rob Hall, a native Mississippian born and raised in Pascagoula, Jackson County. As both a Red sympathizer and southerner, the overweight, white-haired pipe smoker intrigued locals throughout the trial. Several Mississippi papers, such as the Clarksdale Press Register, Delta Democrat-Times, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, and Jackson Daily News, sent representatives. However, most others chose to use the wire services for their coverage instead. Art Everett, Associated Press (AP) reporter who had covered the Sam Sheppard murder trial in Ohio the year before, provided many of those stories. Gene Herrick, an AP photographer, was also present.
Members of the black press represented several publications, most of which were published weekly or monthly. Present were Simeon Booker, Cloyte Murdock, and photographer David Jackson, all with Ebony and Jet magazines, which fell under the auspices of Johnson Publications in Chicago. Nannie Mitchell-Turner, president of the St. Louis Argus, also went to town with two of her staff, reporter Steve Duncan and photographer William B. Franklin. James Hicks of the Baltimore Afro-American was a prominent presence among the black press, as was Robert Ratcliffe, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, who took with him a white reporter from New York, James Boyack. In addition to Alex Wilson, the Memphis based Tri-State Defender sent a young reporter named Moses Newson and freelance photographer Ernest C. Withers.12
Significantly, it was not just the print media that covered the Till trial. CBS and NBC also had newsreel photographers present, and NBC even sent a plane to a field in nearby Tutwiler each day to fly film coverage back to New York in time for the evening news. In all, observers estimated that seventy reporters, photographers, and cameramen flooded Sumner, the most seen anywhere since the Sheppard trial.13 The 1954 Brown decision had elevated interest in the civil rights dialogue to a national audience, and now the Till case was adding a layer of shock and tragedy to that discussion.14 Journalists from the North and South reported aspects of the case differently, dependent upon one’s own level of sympathy with, or rejection of, the Jim Crow South. The black journalists stood out from their white counterparts, especially those from the South, as they were also caught in a culture clash. Several studies of the Till case over the years have focused on how the regionally and racially divided press covered the trial.15
The courtroom quickly filled to capacity and beyond. The room, which held 280, had very few spectator seats on this opening day, limited mainly by the 120-man special venire panel, called from throughout the county. A forty-eight-man regular venire, chosen from the western, or Sumner, district, was also seated. Therefore, people were forced to sit on window sills, crowd aisles, and stand along walls. Two rows reserved for blacks in the rear of the room easily filled up, but of the forty-five to fifty black spectators present, several stood or were forced into the hallway.16 Before the proceedings began, the court excused thirty-two members of the jury pool who had been selected for other cases, while thirty-nine were dismissed for a variety of reasons, such as age and hearing imparities.17 Missing from the courtroom on this opening day was Mamie Bradley, mother of Emmett Till.18
At 9:05 A.M., Circuit Judge Curtis Swango welcomed the press and announced a twenty-minute delay in the proceedings to allow photographers time to take pictures. Swango, forty-seven, was a graduate of the University of Mississippi and served in the state House of Representatives beginning in 1936. In 1950, he was appointed to the bench by then-governor Fielding Wright. Regarded as a fair-minded jurist who “makes you toe the line,” Swango received advance praise from both the prosecution and the defense.19 Eleven white and four black photographers took advantage of every moment granted by the judge, moving unrestrainedly around the courtroom, often standing side by side, on top of chairs, tables, and even a ladder. All of this amused spectators. “Photographers work with that wide-eyed, almost desperate, air,” observed Clarion-Ledger reporter Jay Milner, “as if ‘just one more shot’ was a matter of life or death.”20
When Swango called the court to order at 9:25, he explained that neither photography nor sketching would be permitted while court was in session, but that both could resume during recesses. Two sketch artists, Franklin McMahon from Life magazine and John Somerville from the Jackson State Times, were present. Judge Swango permitted smoking in the courtroom and invited all the men present to remove their suit coats if they wished. John Popham was the only one to keep his coat on and his tie fastened throughout the day; even Swango finally shed his coat during the heat of the afternoon session. The room was without air conditioning, and two ceiling fans only seemed to stir up the heat as the day went on. The temperature reached ninety-five degrees, but as one reporter noted, an occasional breeze kept the crowded courtroom from becoming “unbearable.”21
J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant were escorted to Sumner from the jail in Charleston under the watch of Marshall Shorty Wilkie and a deputy, both of whom were armed. The half-brothers sat without handcuffs in the rear of the car.22 Once in Sumner, they entered the courtroom briefly. Then, probably because business unrelated to the trial was in progress, they walked across the street to the offices of J. J. Breland and John Whitten. Mississippi law required that defendants be present during jury selection, and at 10:15, both men walked back into the courthouse, accompanied this time by their wives, children, and a few dozen other relatives.23 The room went abuzz upon the entrance of the brothers, followed by a heightened round of picture-taking. Milam seemed willing, even anxious to talk to reporters, but Bryant remained quiet. Those present were just as intrigued by Carolyn Bryant, the target of Emmett Till’s now famous wolf whistle.24 If not for the brief encounter between her and Till in the Bryants’ small country store less than a month earlier, none of them would be in that courtroom. Both Carolyn Bryant and Juanita Milam stood firmly by their men, and together issued a statement read by attorney Breland. “We know our husbands are innocent of these charges and are confident that any fair jury will acquit them.”25
At 10:30, shortly after the defendants took their seats, Judge Swango reached into his Panama straw hat, handed names of prospective jurors to Sheriff Strider, and jury selection began.26 As the process got under way, District Attorney Gerald Chatham spoke to the jury pool: “This case has received wide publicity. The state is going to take every precaution to see that we have a fair and impartial jury.” To do that, he first asked the men if race would be a factor in swaying their verdict. Each replied that it would not.27 “The burden of the state is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants are guilty,” Chatham explained, “but that does not mean that you must know that they did it because if you knew they did it, you would be witnesses and not jurors.”28 Chatham also told reporters that because the state’s case was based primarily on circumstantial evidence, he would not seek the death penalty. That would also prevent potential jurors who did not believe in capital punishment from excusing themselves. However, if the jury found the defendants “guilty as charged,” execution would still be mandatory.29
Questioning went uninterrupted for the next ninety minutes. Each side was given twelve peremptory challenges to disqualify potential jurors without cause. The judge could also dismiss any he felt compelled to. Prosecutors were careful, focusing in part on the well-publicized defense fund set up for Milam and Bryant. This fund had become so popular that L
eflore County sheriff George Smith came to the courtroom with a $45 donation sent to him by someone from Georgia. Smith turned it over to the defendants’ families. Special prosecutor Robert Smith warned that anyone with even a slight connection to the fund would be disqualified immediately. The state dismissed one man after he admitted giving a dollar to someone who came into his store asking for donations. Chatham excused two brothers simply because a relative was involved with the fund. Another man said he allowed a jar to sit in his store but said he attached a disclaimer explaining that the drive had nothing to do with his business. He was also rejected.30
Judge Swango allowed prosecutors, over defense objections, to ask the men if they would have contributed to the defense fund if they had been asked to. “I might have and I might not have,” said Jesse Lay, night marshal of Tutwiler and a former deputy sheriff. Lay, and anyone else who answered similarly, was immediately disqualified.31 Reporters were impressed with the extent to which prosecutors labored to assemble a fair jury. Rob Hall of the Communist Daily Worker said that County Attorney Hamilton Caldwell questioned the men “with the persistence of a ferret to bring out their sympathy for the two white men.” Chatham and Smith did the same, noted Hall, “which surprised most of the visiting newsmen.”32 The state queried the jury pool about friendships that might exist between them and the accused, and also probed into possible relationships with the defense attorneys.33
There were some humorous moments during jury selection. One man entered the court with two summonses—one as a defense witness, and the other for jury duty. “We’d like to get him on the jury,” joked defense attorney Sidney Carlton, “but I doubt if it would work out.” Another was called twice because he went by two names. Several others, however, were excused because they had important business to attend to, most notably harvesting their cotton fields.34
Reporters were both fascinated and disturbed by the presence of Milam’s and Bryant’s young sons, although children as props were not unusual in Mississippi courtrooms. The defendants each had two sons, all four dressed meticulously. The boys remained attentive at first, but soon grew bored and restless and began pacing the floor near the press tables, playing with water pistols, pointing them at deputies, and pretending to shoot. Milam and Bryant regularly tried to quiet them by giving them mints and gum while alternately sitting them on the laps of their mothers and grandmother, Eula Bryant. Before the end of the day, the boys, also suffering in the sweltering heat, went shirtless.35 Yet the entire scene served an important purpose for the defense team, which hoped to convey to potential jurors that doting fathers such as Milam and Bryant would hardly be inclined to kill other people’s children.
By the noon recess, twenty-seven of the venire had been dismissed, while prosecutors had tentatively chosen eleven for the jury.36 Carlton, who had predicted the day before that the trial would be over by late Tuesday or Wednesday, now admitted that it was sure to last longer. Fellow team member Harvey Henderson, frustrated by the state’s laborious process in selecting the jury, joked that it could last the rest of the year. During the business of the morning session, spectators ate sandwiches and drank ice water and soda. Two men openly drank cans of beer, and neither was reprimanded by the judge or bailiffs.37
Outside, during the break, friends of Milam and Bryant spotted reporters and gave the defendants some free publicity. Johnny Tupman, who had known Bryant for around ten years, said that Bryant had once served under a black noncommissioned officer during the Korean War. “He didn’t seem to mind him. He told us the Negro was a good soldier and that they understood each other.” Yet when asked about this later in the courtroom, Bryant denied it, saying that he was a sergeant and that the black corporal had served under him. These acquaintances, believing that the brothers were innocent, insisted that both Milam and Bryant were friendly to blacks. One said he and his wife often socialized with Roy and Carolyn Bryant, and that he never saw Roy drink in excess or otherwise act improperly.38
During the recess, Milam sang his own praises by insisting that he had been a good neighbor to blacks in his community. One act of heroism came five years earlier when he jumped into the Tallahatchie River to rescue a seven-year-old girl from drowning. Another time he lent his car to a man named Gilbert Henderson so that Henderson could drive his polio-stricken daughter to a doctor. Milam also said that four years earlier he rushed a man named Jack Mammon to a hospital after Mammon had slashed his jugular vein.39 If these stories were true, would Milam’s compassion under one circumstance prohibit him from mistreating and even killing a black stranger under another? Certainly, that was his point, yet such an assumption ignores the complexities of racial tension and violence in the Jim Crow South. For most, black neighbors were tolerated and could even be admired to an extent, but tolerance evaporated and violence often erupted when blacks stepped out of what white citizens had long determined to be “their place.”40
After the lunch recess, neither Sheriff Strider nor his deputies bothered searching the crowd as they reentered the courtroom. However, when members of the press tried to return to their seats, bailiffs required them to enter the room by the front door, making it nearly impossible to push their way through the throng of public spectators. When Strider learned this, he asked a local business, probably the Sumner Sentinel, to print press passes, and within thirty minutes he signed them and passed them out to both black and white reporters, assuring them that they could use the rear door in the future.41
A deputy, spotting two black reporters, saw things differently. The two men, one of whom was Jet magazine’s Simeon Booker, watched for ten minutes as the white reporters entered the courtroom through the back stairs. When the two black men tried the same thing, a “pompous, sneering” deputy immediately stopped them and demanded that they enter through the front door. They complied, and their colleagues followed their lead. The deputies never allowed the black press to use the back door throughout the remainder of the trial, even though Sheriff Strider initially told them they could.42
Over the next three hours, the prosecution dismissed five of the tentatively chosen jurors and replaced them with six others. At 4:26 P.M., Chatham announced that the state had, after questioning nearly half of the panel, finally accepted twelve men. Breland then queried them on behalf of the defense. Would the large number of reporters influence them? he asked. Would they require the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the body in question was Emmett Till’s? Would they also require the state to prove that Milam and Bryant had killed Till? “The fact they have been indicted is no presumption of guilt,” he stressed. The defense did not challenge any of the men based on their answers, but excused two anyway because information on their background was either lacking or the attorneys thought they were too young.43 The ten men selected by the end of court Monday were Howard Armstrong, thirty-three, of Enid; Ed Devaney, seventy-four, of Charleston; George Holland, forty-two, of Glendora; Bishop Matthews, forty-six, of Charleston; Davis Newton, thirty-seven, of Enid; Lee L. Price, sixty-seven, of Charleston; James “J. A.” Shaw Jr., thirty, of Webb; Travis Thomas, forty-eight, of Murfreesboro; James Toole, forty-four, of Enid; and Ray Tribble, twenty-eight, of Payne.
The makeup of the jury is significant. The prosecution’s strategy was to choose men unfamiliar with Milam and Bryant—those living in the northeast section of the county—thinking it would produce a more impartial jury (Holland was the only exception). Yet people who knew the defendants generally did not like them, were afraid of them, and would have been more likely to convict than would strangers. Most of those they chose were from Beat 1 and ran smaller farms. They were actually less friendly toward blacks because they usually found themselves competing with them. The defense team understood full well what the prosecution was doing.44
With only ten jurors accepted into the box, Judge Swango adjourned court at 5:00 P.M.45 This meant that the selection of the two remaining jurors, plus an alternate, would be the first order of business on Tuesday, delaying t
he opening of testimony further.46 The ten jurors, under the watch of four bailiffs ranging from sixty-four to eighty-nine years old, proceeded to the three-story Delta Inn, just 100 yards west of the courthouse, where they remained sequestered throughout the trial. No one was more anxious to leave the stifling heat of the courtroom after the tedious day of jury selection than the defendants.
“Where are our goddamned guards?” an irritated Milam asked as he stood to leave. “We’ve got to get out of here.”47
Sometime during the day Monday, Henry Moon, publicity director for the NAACP in New York, issued a statement prompted by rumors about the organization’s relationship with Mamie Bradley. Speaking just after Mamie’s appearances at NAACP-backed events in Chicago and Cleveland, Moon denied that the NAACP was sponsoring Mamie on a speaking tour. He also said it was not seeking public donations to help with the Till trial (as claimed by A. B. Ainsworth, originator of the defense fund). All legal action, Moon affirmed, rested on the state of Mississippi. Although Till’s funeral had been staffed with an NAACP representative soliciting donations near the casket, Moon said the organization received none of it. “We had no hand in funeral appeals in Chicago, nor have we received any moneys reportedly received in Chicago.”48 If the money went to Mamie as a donation, that was not clear.
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