Emmett Till

by Devery S. Anderson

  Swango recessed court for lunch at 11:15. The jury, eating together for the first time, enjoyed a meal of barbequed pork chops in the Delta Inn dining room. Milam and Bryant ate with Strider at an air-conditioned café in Webb, something they would do each day of the trial. The black press and Mamie Bradley gathered at James Griffin’s Place, a black restaurant and recreational spot on Sumner’s Front Street.75

  The expectations that testimony would begin Tuesday attracted larger crowds, both inside and outside the courthouse. Around 400 people jammed the courtroom, and more than once Judge Swango, fearing a fire hazard, asked bailiffs to clear the aisles. Outside, local merchants capitalized on the crowded town square. Because Sumner’s only restaurants were Griffin’s and a dining room for guests at the Delta Inn, a drugstore on the square began stocking a large supply of sandwiches. A Clarksdale café owner opened a concession stand in the courthouse lobby, offering fried chicken lunches for $1.25. P. M. Westbrook, another Clarksdale businessman, brought food in a portable icebox and sold ninety ham sandwiches and nearly 600 Cokes. A Sumner clothing store was finally able to sell its supply of expensive sport shirts to out-of-town visitors, items that had hung on racks all summer. Black-owned businesses also supplied merchandise to black visitors.76

  Amid all of this brisk business, Sumner citizens had nearly all become experts at public relations, reminding newsmen that their little town was simply the home of the trial, not the location of the murder.77 Some expressed publicly what most were thinking privately—that northern reporters were making a major issue out of a local matter. One Sumner grocer bluntly explained to Dan Wakefield just why that was so. “That river is full of niggers.”78

  Still, many Tallahatchians maintained an irresistible sense of curiosity about the trial, even if they resented the fact that it was occurring at all. Delta Democrat-Times reporter Harry Marsh observed that inside the courtroom, “it seems that almost everyone in western Tallahatchie County is anxious to see the proceedings.” Shortly before recess, Swango told the men left over from the jury pool that they were free to go home, but none left their seats. Sheriff Strider appeared unconcerned about the growing crowds, however, and when asked, said he had no plans to utilize the National Guard. “When I call out the National Guard it will be because ambulances are hauling people away.”79

  It was probably during this recess that Sidney Carlton began circulating stories of J. W. Milam’s heroics. Carlton, who had learned during a phone call on Monday about Milam’s rescue of a drowning black girl, denied that the story was “defense propaganda,” and said he did not believe it himself until he verified it. Milam’s sister, Mary Louise Campbell, similarly boasted of her brother to another reporter.80

  As Carlton praised his client, he could not resist painting Emmett Till as a criminal. Carolyn Bryant had declined press requests to tell her side of the incident, and Carlton insisted that it would “take a block and tackle to get it out of her” because she felt ashamed. But Carlton told reporters Carolyn Bryant’s version himself, echoing what he told some of them at Mose Wright’s home two days earlier. As Carlton explained it, Till “propositioned” Bryant, and then tried to “assault her” in the store. “It got so bad that one of the other boys had to go in and get him out. We believe the other boys had egged him on, because of his big talk and told him there was a pretty white woman in the store, to go in and see what he could do.” When Till went in the store, insisted Carlton, Till “mauled her and he tussled her and he made indecent proposals to her, and if that boy had any sense he’d have made the next train to Chicago.”81 Only Till and Carolyn Bryant ever knew for sure what happened inside the store, but only Bryant was still alive to tell about it. The bigger question, however, was why that story was even relevant if Carlton’s clients were innocent.

  During the lunch recess, the moment came to notify the prosecution about the news brewing in Mound Bayou since Sunday. Clark Porteous, T. R. M. Howard’s trusted white liaison in the press, approached Chatham, Robert Smith, and Leflore County sheriff George Smith, and passed along the news that Howard had dropped on him the night before. In fact, he read, or perhaps handed the men, a statement prepared by Howard that told the story in detail. Sunday night, Howard wrote, a black man came to him with information that Emmett Till may have been killed on a plantation managed by Leslie Milam, brother of the defendants. This plantation, owned by M. P. Sturdivant of Glendora, was located three and a half miles west of Drew.82 Coincidentally, J. J. Breland had successfully defended Sturdivant and his stepson in 1942 against a murder charge; Gerald Chatham and County Attorney J. Hamilton Caldwell prosecuted that case.83 Howard had learned sometime on Monday that someone tried to clean bloodstains from the floor of the shed, but that if officers searched it they might still see evidence of the crime. The most persuasive part of Howard’s statement linked Till to the shed:

  I am informed that a 1955 green Chevrolet truck with a white top was seen on the place at 6 A.M. Sunday, Aug. 28, the last time Till was seen alive. There were four white men in the cab and three negro men in the back. Photos of Till have been identified. He was in the middle in the back.

  There are witnesses who heard the cries of a boy from the closed shed. They heard blows. They noted with anxiety of soul that the cries gradually decreased until they were heard no more.

  Later a tractor was moved from the shed.

  The truck came out with a tarpaulin spread over the back.

  The negroes who went into the shed were not seen at this time and have not been seen around the plantation since.

  Porteous assured the men of Howard’s promise to produce the witnesses, provided the prosecution proceed cautiously and was present when he did.84

  Chatham and Robert Smith were understandably shocked over these revelations; they were also agitated, because if Till had been killed in Sunflower County, it meant that the trial, now in its second day, was in the wrong venue. Sheriff George Smith, hearing this, said he had been looking for the missing blacks (or at least one, the third man seen on Mose Wright’s porch behind Milam and Bryant) and the truck since shortly after Till went missing. Chatham, Robert Smith, and Sheriff Smith agreed that Porteous should call Stanny Sanders, district attorney in Sunflower County, and convey the news to him, which he did. Sanders was so surprised by the new developments and their implications that he canceled plans to attend the funeral of fifty-four-year-old Sunflower County sheriff Van Buren Long, who had died the day before.85

  When the trial reconvened at 1:30, Chatham told Swango the startling news about new witnesses, and made a special request for a recess until the following morning so that his team could meet with them. Attorney Breland objected, saying that such a move was unusual, and that the state could commence testimony with the witnesses it already had. Swango granted the request, however, agreeing that it was reasonable. He also saw the break as a chance to finally deal with the crowded courtroom, and addressed everyone assembled.

  “If fire develops any place in this courthouse, great tragedy will take place,” he said. Beginning Wednesday, he promised, he would remove anyone standing in the courtroom unless they were there on official business.86

  With Tuesday’s court session suddenly and unexpectedly over for the day, Mamie Bradley obviously had questions swirling around in her mind—namely, who were these people who may have seen her son driven to his death? As she pondered these new developments, she was taken to Mound Bayou by Clarksdale businessman Fulton Ford, brother of Rev. Henry Louis Ford, who had preached Emmett’s eulogy three weeks earlier.87 Both Bradley and Congressman Diggs lodged at Dr. Howard’s home for the remainder of the trial. This was Diggs’s second stay with the doctor that year. Because Howard—wealthy, black, influential, and courageous—was an outspoken advocate of civil rights, he was hated by a majority of white Mississippians and had received numerous death threats. His property was carefully guarded, with weapons placed strategically throughout the house for easy access if needed. Black reporters who staye
d there were surprised at the length Howard went to safeguard his home against possible violence. Mamie Bradley was equally amazed, but also found the atmosphere relaxing enough to spend time playing with the Howards’ adopted baby.88

  Finding the witnesses in Sunflower County would not be easy. The farm where they allegedly saw the truck was, after all, managed by a brother of the defendants. Any suspicious-looking persons, white or black, seeking out field hands were taking a risk. Two neighboring plantations owned by Clint Shurden and Ella Zama, and where other witnesses lived, would also need to be penetrated with caution. After careful planning, Ruby Hurley and Moses Newson, along with Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi, and Amzie Moore, president of the chapter in Cleveland, Mississippi, left Sumner about 12:30 P.M. For Evers, whose job required him to routinely investigate beatings, murders, and shootings, this excursion to Drew was somewhat routine. Driving in Evers’s 1955 Oldsmobile, they stopped in Cleveland, where they changed into cotton-picking clothes and went undercover as sharecroppers. Newson wore an extra-large pair of overalls, and Moore and Evers dressed similarly. Hurley donned a Mother Hubbard dress and placed a bandanna on her head. Then they got into another car, an older, less conspicuous model, and drove to Drew.89

  These three NAACP officers found a few of the witnesses and received assurances that one or two, at least, would be willing to testify. They left with the impression from other contacts at the plantations that the witnesses would be taken to a designated place in Mound Bayou that evening for the 8:00 P.M. meeting. The most important one besides Frank Young was Willie Reed, who lived on the neighboring Shurden plantation and had seen a boy on the truck whom he believed was Emmett Till. He also heard the beating in the shed. Another, Mandy Bradley (no relation to Mamie Bradley), was a tenant on the Sturdivant farm who saw several white men and the truck parked at the shed.90

  Newsmen present in the courtroom earlier that day did not overlook the fact of a story brewing somewhere, and they wasted little time trying to find it. Talk of a bloodstained red barn did not escape them; neither did a story of a possible witness who cleaned blood out of J. W. Milam’s truck. “Left with no proceedings to cover and an unoccupied afternoon, the army of reporters covering the trial scattered in different directions trying to trace down the leads,” noted a story in the Jackson State Times.91

  This may have been the same day that Dan Wakefield heard rumors that a witness was being held in jail in a nearby town. Not having a car, Wakefield asked two deputies how he could get there. After looking the reporter over and learning that he was from New York, they offered to let him ride with them because they were going there anyway. Wakefield got into the backseat and rode along for about five miles when the men suddenly stopped the car and told him they had changed their plans.

  “This is where you get out, boy,” one of them said.

  Somewhat stunned, Wakefield got out and walked all the way back to Sumner, arriving just before nightfall. He told fellow reporter Murray Kempton about his strange excursion.

  “You know,” Kempton replied, “you’re lucky that all they did was let you walk back.”92

  Meanwhile, Stanny Sanders called Sunflower County prosecutor Pascol J. Townsend. Governor Hugh White, now aware of the new developments, immediately contacted Gwin Cole, an FBI-trained highway patrol identification officer. Both men were dispatched to Sumner, and from there went to Drew with Sheriff Smith, Deputy John Cothran, and others, where they conducted a casual search of the shed. No scientific tests were made, and they found nothing unusual, except that the floor was covered with cottonseed, which may have been placed there to hide traces of the murder. Chatham told reporters that “there was so much soybeans and corn in there that not much could be determined. However, if he [Emmett Till] had been killed there, those head wounds would have left a lot of blood.”

  They also visited an abandoned cotton gin in Itta Bena, Leflore County, and discovered that the fan, similar to the one used to weigh down Emmett Till’s body in the river, was missing.93 It is not known why the officers chose to search this particular cotton gin, located along one of two routes between Greenwood and Drew. It may have been just a hunch, or perhaps someone tipped them off.

  Sure enough, problems developed on the Drew plantations. Sanders and some officers questioned Willie Reed and the others on Tuesday afternoon, but the Mound Bayou group learned that when the black witnesses saw the white investigators, they misunderstood their visit. After the officers arrived, rumors spread quickly that they were from the FBI, and the witnesses became fearful. Consequently, none of them showed up for the 8:00 P.M. meeting, although the sheriffs of Leflore and Sunflower Counties did. Complicating things further, defense attorneys heard about the investigation and surmised that something was up.94

  Sheriff Smith was not discouraged, however, and told the black reporters, “These witnesses have a story to tell. We’ve got to find them if it takes all night. We’ll stop court until we find them.” At that point, officers began calling the plantations where witnesses lived and told landowners to produce them or face legal consequences. They did not stop there. Smith and the white newsmen each took one of the black reporters with them and began searching. In “Mississippi’s first major interracial manhunt,” as Simeon Booker called it, he, along with James Featherston and Porteous, followed Smith at speeds up to seventy miles per hour along back roads while they searched for Willie Reed. Booker explained their planned strategy: “The Negro escort would plead with the potential witnesses to testify. There would be no warrants issued. No one would be carted out of his home. We agreed to round up our people and bring them to the State Enforcement Agent’s office in Drew.”95

  The group got lost trying to find Reed. With Hicks driving separately, they drove back to Townsend’s office, where Frank Young arrived with a white woman, presumably fifty-eight-year-old Ella Zama, his widowed landlady. Young refused to talk to anyone except Howard, who was supposed to follow the others to Drew. For some reason, however, Howard was delayed. After a long wait, Zama grew tired and left, taking Young with her. When the sheriff went to Young’s home an hour later, he was nowhere to be found. At 2:00 A.M. they located fifty-year-old Mandy Bradley, thanks to the help of a black minister, Isaac Daniels, and reporter Moses Newson. They pleaded with her for ten minutes to come out, but she refused, saying she did not want to get involved. She even claimed that she knew nothing about the case. The persistence of the preacher and the reporter paid off, however, and Mandy finally agreed to testify. By 3:00 A.M., the group had located Willie Reed; his grandfather, Add Reed, who saw Leslie Milam around the shed the morning after Till’s kidnapping; and Walter Billingsley, who was only twenty-five feet away milking a cow when Reed walked by the barn. All of them were scared, but contacts at the plantations promised to have them in Sumner when court convened later that morning. Howard even offered to move them to Chicago after the trial if they feared repercussions for testifying.96

  Wednesday, four of the new witnesses went to Sumner and were subpoenaed, but Frank Young was not among them. Rumors shortly surfaced that the quiet-mannered Young went to town on Thursday as directed, but soon left after he got confused about entering the courthouse and making himself known. Clint Shurden said he saw Young standing outside the courthouse, but the prosecution dismissed that sighting, believing that Howard, who was actively looking for Young, would have seen him had he been there. Ella Zama, however, later told Porteous that she had heard that Young did go to Sumner. By Thursday night Young still had not returned to the plantation, but he had earlier told his wife that he would be home late. His testimony was important because he, like Willie Reed, had heard the beating at the shed. Yet Young, who had courageously alerted Howard to the plantation witnesses to begin with, was never spotted in Sumner again during the remainder of the trial, and no mention was made of him thereafter.97

  At 9:00 A.M. on Wednesday, September 21, court proceedings resumed. Four of the five new witnesses were at th
e courthouse, and, finally, testimony was about to begin. After a few preliminaries, the state called its first witness, Mose Wright, about 9:20. It took Wright several minutes to make his way through the crowd and to the wicker-bottom chair at the front of the courtroom. As he walked to the stand, the room, which had been alive with conversation, suddenly went silent.98

  Milam and Bryant listened attentively throughout Wright’s testimony. The defendants were alone this day, their small sons staying away from the courthouse, and their wives both quarantined in the witness room. The courtroom filled up about forty-five minutes early, although it was not the dangerously crowded spectacle of the day before. Judge Swango held to his word and allowed only limited standing beyond the room’s 280-seat capacity. There were more white women in the crowd, and several teenage girls were also present. Seven law students from the University of Mississippi Law School in Oxford took the day off from classes to witness the proceedings. Two journalists giving the case international coverage arrived in Sumner on Wednesday morning in time for the opening of testimony. These were Ronald Singleton of the London Express (with five million subscribers) and John Brehl of the Toronto Star.99

  Wright, dressed in black pants, white shirt, black tie, and yellow suspenders, responded in detail to Gerald Chatham during direct examination. The state needed Wright to establish the identity of three people, two still living, one dead, in order to secure a conviction. The defense’s job, of course, would be to undermine that testimony. Wright spent about an hour on the stand, answering questions from attorneys on both sides. Court reporter O. C. Taylor, with forty-three years’ experience, recorded every word.100