Emmett Till

by Devery S. Anderson

  “No, Sir.”

  “And what you are testifying to is what would happen under normal conditions, is it not?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And isn’t it true that if a person is fat, or heavy, and has more fatty tissue than the average person, that such a body will decompose at a greater rate than one that is not so fat?”

  Again, Malone agreed, but Breland objected, pointing out that nothing had ever been said about this body being fat. Swango overruled the objection, and Malone’s answer stood. Malone’s testimony concluded court for the day, and at 5:05 P.M. Swango called a recess until 9:30 the following morning.87

  That evening, the black reporters learned of an important new development. Shortly after court adjourned, Alex Wilson, reporter for the Tri-State Defender, received word that Levi “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Lee Loggins, the two men rumored to have been on the truck with Emmett Till the morning after the kidnapping, had been located.88 This was obviously an important discovery, and if true, could prove to be explosive for the prosecution. The exact whereabouts of the men had been a mystery since James Hicks first learned of their existence five days earlier. If this piece of the puzzle could finally be solved, it was not a moment too soon.

  Several among the press, including Simeon Booker, Clotye Murdock, and David Jackson, along with Basil Brown (Representative Diggs’s attorney), began following this lead. They first visited the informant who broke the news. This led them to the woman who had initially reported the sighting. She said that just three days earlier, she went to the jail in Charleston to visit a relative. While there, an inmate she did not know asked her to pass a message to a friend on the outside. When she did so, she learned that the man at the jail was Levi Collins. Collins and Loggins, she learned, were being held for two weeks for “investigation” after having been seen washing blood out of a truck. The men claimed they had killed a deer, but hunting season had not yet started.89

  The group needed someone to positively identify the men. They wondered—had Strider jailed them under false names until after the end of the trial? After traveling some distance, they found a reliable witness who agreed to go to Charleston and make the identification. Around 2:00 A.M., they called Clark Porteous. He agreed to meet them that morning and to ask Gerald Chatham and Robert Smith for permission to make a check of the jail.90

  Friday morning, Wilson picked up their “finger-man” and made ready for the trip to Charleston. When Porteous told the prosecutors the story about Collins and Loggins, Smith and Chatham explained that they had already searched for the men at the jail twice and in neither case were they anywhere to be found. Porteous, nevertheless, still wanted to search for the men with someone who could positively identify them. The prosecutors again refused, saying that closing arguments were about to start, and that any further delays in the trial “might result in adverse effect.” More important, according to Porteous, they simply did not believe the men were being jailed. Robert Smith later told the New York Post that Gwin Cole had not only looked for them in Charleston, but he also searched a jail in another county. In each case, the sheriffs “raised hell” about the invasion of their privacy. Needless to say, wrote Wilson, the whole mission “hit a stone wall.”91

  Day five of the trial proceeded as scheduled, but it was met by a steady, although unwelcome, rainfall. Cotton farmers, who needed rain only through June, worried about the damage this downpour might cause, telling reporters that it could cost them up to $20 per bale.92

  Each witness who took the stand on Friday spoke to the character of the defendants. Three testified for Milam, four others for Bryant. The first three, friends of Milam, each spent only a few minutes on the stand. J. W. Kellum conducted direct examination of the men. All were cross-examined by Gerald Chatham.

  Other than asking a little background information about themselves and their relationships with Milam, Kellum had only one question for each of the men. Did they know Milam’s “general reputation for peace and violence,” and, if so, what was it? None of them hesitated, and all affirmed that Milam’s reputation was good. During his cross-examination, Chatham wanted to hear from each man just where their knowledge came from. Was their court appearance a favor based on a close friendship? Perhaps some kind of repayment?

  The first witness, Lee Russell Allison of Tippo had just been reelected as a county supervisor over Beat 4, where Milam lived. Because Milam had supported Allison in this election, Chatham suggested that Allison’s testimony was one way to reciprocate.93

  Chatham took his questioning a step further.

  “I want you to tell the jury if it is not an actual fact that he [Milam] was convicted—or he was arrested and pleaded guilty to a charge—”

  Before Chatham could finish, defense attorney Breland raised an objection. Chatham was trying to introduce the fact that Milam had, in the past, been arrested and pleaded guilty at least five times to bootlegging.94

  Swango sent the jury out of the room, after which Chatham explained himself to the court. Because Allison had testified to Milam’s reputation, Chatham wanted to know how the witness had come to form his opinion. Swango took issue because Chatham never made that clear during his examination. However, he allowed Chatham to ask the question again with the jury absent before ruling on the objection.

  “Mr. Allison,” Chatham continued, “what you meant to tell the jury was that you don’t know of any act of violence that was ever committed by J. W. Milam, so far as your personal knowledge is concerned? Isn’t that right?”

  “That is all I can say,” replied the witness. “I can just say what I do know.”95

  Breland addressed the court again, explaining that Chatham’s question went beyond the focus of the defense’s direct examination, and Swango agreed.

  “As the Court sees it, this examination is a cross[-]examination, and it will have to be limited to the matters in issue in the charge here. And he has testified that the general reputation of the defendant, J. W. Milam, in the community in which J. W. Milam lives, that the general reputation for peace and violence is good.”96

  Chatham then asked Allison if, in his role as supervisor, he had tried to get to know those in his district and form a friendship with them. Allison said he did. Then Chatham went back to his original question.

  “Have you ever heard of Mr. J. W. Milam ever having been convicted of any criminal charge?”

  “No, Sir,” Allison answered.

  Breland protested, and once again, Swango took his side.

  “The objection is sustained, and the question is not to be asked in the presence of the jury,” he warned Chatham.

  The jury returned to the courtroom, but Chatham had no further questions.97

  Lee McGarrh, owner of a gas station and grocery store in Glendora, was the next witness. During cross-examination, Chatham pointed out that McGarrh was also part of the venire panel from among whom the jury was called, but that McGarrh had disqualified himself. He asked McGarrh if he had ever known Milam to be involved in any wrongdoing.

  “No, I have not; not to my knowledge.”

  “And you, as a close friend of his, you want to help him out of his difficulty, is that right?”

  “I didn’t come up here to tell a lie,” said McGarrh. “I came to tell the truth.”

  “But that is the reason you are up here this morning, isn’t it, because you are a friend of J. W. Milam?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Chatham had nothing further.98

  L. W. Boyce, who lived about three and a half miles out of Glendora, gave the same assessment of Milam as the previous two witnesses, and Chatham, during cross-examination, queried further about the friendship between the two men.

  “And he asked you to come up here and testify here in his behalf, and that is the reason you came here as a witness, is that right?”

  “No, Sir. He didn’t ask me to come here at all.”

  “Then how did you come here? Why did you come?” asked Chatham.r />
  “I got notice from the lawyers to come up here.”

  “And no one said anything to you about it?”

  “No,” said Boyce.

  “And they didn’t ask you what you were going to say?”

  Again, the answer was “no.”

  Chatham pressed further. “But you did come up here as a friend to tell about his reputation as a friend, and to help him out if you could, isn’t that right?”

  “I am up here to tell his reputation as I know it.”

  “But you are up here to help him out, isn’t that true?”

  “I am up here to tell about his reputation as I know it.”

  Chatham got all he was going to get from Boyce, and the witness was excused.99

  Kellum and Chatham next questioned the four character witnesses brought in for Roy Bryant. James Sanders, who lived three miles north of Bryant’s home in Money, said he had known Bryant for two years. He also answered positively about Bryant’s reputation.

  “And you are basing your statement of his good reputation on your friendship for him, and you are up here trying to help him out of his difficulty more than anything else, isn’t that true?” asked Chatham, bluntly.

  “I am just up here to state the truth.”100

  Harold Terry, also of Money, next took the stand. Bryant had a good reputation, Terry said.

  “I want to ask you how many people you heard discuss Mr. Bryant’s reputation during the past two years,” asked Chatham on cross-examination.

  “I haven’t heard Mr. Bryant discussed,’” replied Terry.

  “Then you haven’t heard his reputation discussed?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Well, then, how do you know what his general reputation is?”

  Breland objected. “If the Court please, that is the best reputation a man can have, when nobody says nothing about him.” However, Swango thought the question proper and allowed the witness to answer.

  Addressing Terry again, Chatham asked the witness to clarify. “Then you just stated what you think it is? Is that what you are stating now?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And that is just your opinion, is that right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Who asked you to come here to testify today?”

  “I volunteered to come up here,” insisted Terry.

  “And you are in sympathy with Mr. Bryant, is that right, or is that wrong?”

  Terry sat silent.

  “Why do you hesitate to answer, Mr. Terry?”

  Again, Terry said nothing.

  Chatham did not belabor the point any further. “You can stand aside.”101

  Grover Duke, a section foreman on the railroad, also lived in Money and testified positively about Bryant. Cross-examining Duke, Chatham asked the same question he had asked Terry.

  “How many people have you heard discuss his reputation, Mr. Duke?”

  “I never heard it discussed one way or the other.”

  Establishing the fact that Duke and Bryant were friends, Chatham asked, “as one friend to another, you would naturally come up here today to do what you can to help him out of his difficulty, if your testimony would help, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Who asked you to come up here and testify?”

  “I believe it was a brother-in-law of the defendant,” Duke answered.

  “And he asked you to come up here and testify for him?”

  “I volunteered to come.”

  “And you are in sympathy with him, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “That is all.”102

  The last witness was Franklin Smith, a thirty-year resident of Money and a cousin of Leflore County sheriff George Smith. On cross-examination, Chatham asked what Bryant’s reputation had been since August 28, but Smith kept quiet after Kellum objected. Smith and Bryant were members of the same church, where Smith said he saw Bryant “occasionally.” He had volunteered to come to the trial and testify because of his friendship, he admitted, and also stated that he was “in sympathy” with Bryant.103

  After Smith’s testimony, Breland announced on behalf of his clients, “The defendants rest.” The state affirmed again that it had nothing in rebuttal. Then, on behalf of the defendants, Breland made a motion for “the Court to exclude all the evidence for and on behalf of the State of Mississippi, and to direct the jury to return a verdict of Not Guilty.” Swango rejected the motions and at 10:23 A.M. recessed court for fifteen minutes.104

  When court resumed at 10:38, the final phase of the trial began. With all witness testimony completed, attorneys would deliver their closing arguments before the jury. Judge Swango allowed each side to take one hour and ten minutes to present their final summations.105 For both the prosecution and the defense, it was to be an emotional finale to five long days in the hot, crowded courtroom. The pleas from the attorneys, following three days of witness testimony, would be the last chance to influence the jurors before the twelve men deciding the fate of the defendants would begin deliberation and ultimately make their decision.

  Gerald Chatham, on behalf of the state of Mississippi, spoke first. His was a call for justice that nobody in that courtroom, or even on the street below, could ever forget. He spoke so loudly that those gathered outside could hear his plea for a conviction, even through the rain that had not let up all morning. Sweating profusely and occasionally pounding on a table, he spoke, as one reporter wrote, “like a Baptist preacher in a Baptist church.” Addressing the issue of outside agitators, Chatham insisted he was “not concerned with the pressure of organizations outside or inside the state. I am concerned with what is morally right or wrong.” To the state of Mississippi, this was “just another murder case,” he said, stressing to the jurors that if they returned a verdict based on anything other than the evidence, they would “endanger every custom and tradition we hold dear.”106

  Chatham declared forcefully that “the very first word of the state’s testimony was dripping with the blood of Emmett Till. What were those words, gentlemen? They were ‘preacher, preacher. I want that boy from Chicago—that boy that did the talking in Money,’ they said. That wasn’t an invitation to that card game they claimed.” The murder of Emmett Till was cowardly; Milam and Bryant had taken the law into their own hands and given the boy “a court-martial with the death penalty imposed.” Afterward, “to hide that dastardly, cowardly act they tied barbed wire to his neck and to a heavy gin fan and dumped him into the river for the turtles and fish.”107

  Chatham said that when Milam and Bryant kidnapped Till, they were “absolutely morally and legally responsible for his protection.” If Till acted up and deserved to be punished, the worst they should have done was to “turn him over a barrel and give him a little beating.” “I’ve whipped my boy. You’ve whipped yours,” he said. “You deal with a child as a child—not as if he is a man.” And since the night they took Emmett Till from Mose Wright’s home, “he hasn’t been seen since.”108

  Chatham addressed the defense arguments about the identification of the body. All it took was someone who knew and loved Emmett Till to identify him, not an undertaker or a sheriff. He then told a moving story about his son, whose dog, Shep, had gone missing. One day the boy came to him and said, “Dad, I’ve found Shep.” The young child led his father to a hollow ravine behind their barn, and showed him a decomposing carcass. “That dog’s body was rotting and the meat was falling off its bones,” Chatham told the jury, “but my little boy pointed to it and said, ‘That’s old Shep, Pa. That’s old Shep.’” If there was anything left of Emmett Till—a hairline, an ear, or just a part of his nose, “then I say to you that Mamie Bradley was God’s given witness to identify him.”109

  Chatham’s impassioned arguments brought tears to the eyes of the black journalists, sitting on the right side of the courtroom. Even some white spectators were crying. Milam stared straight down at a newspaper positioned on his lap, cupping a hand to h
is face. Bryant sat back and smoked a cigar. Carolyn Bryant seemed to listen carefully, while Juanita Milam fidgeted a little. The jurors, however, were fixated on Chatham. One removed his pipe and put it away, and another was so entranced that he let a cigar burn out in his mouth.110

  Chatham continued criticizing the defense. When the corpse was first found, he said, the sheriff learned that there was a body of a “little nigger boy in the river.” Everyone who saw the body said the boy was black. Next, he mentioned Dr. Otken. “Now we have this doctor come up here with all his degrees and titles and tell us that he could not tell whether it was a white boy or a colored boy.” If he cannot tell the difference, Chatham believed, the people are wasting their tax dollars sending men like him to medical school. “I want to say this about the doctor—if he can’t tell black from white, I don’t want him writing any prescriptions for me.” That remark brought a ripple of laughter throughout the courtroom.111

  Chatham again reminded the jury that the most severe punishment Milam and Bryant should have meted out to the boy was a whipping. “But did they do this? No they did not. Willie Reed told you how he saw Emmett Till that Sunday morning on the Milam place and he told you how he later saw J. W. Milam with the pistol in his hand and that Uncle Mose saw him also with a pistol.” Then Chatham made an important point.

  “If Willie Reed had been lying, the five lawyers for the defense would have had fifty people up here to say he was not qualified to speak,” he assured the jury. “But did they do this? They did not. They couldn’t do it because Willie was telling the truth. But the next time anyone saw that little boy his feet were sticking up out of the river and he was dead.”112

  During this summation, one reporter raised his camera but was quickly spotted by Judge Swango, who, interrupting Chatham, ordered the erring photographer to leave the room. However, the man simply put down his camera and stayed in his seat. A reporter for the black press called Chatham’s remarks “one of the most passionate pleas ever made by a white man in the south on behalf of a Negro.” Even Mamie Bradley was impressed, as she turned and whispered to that same reporter, “He could not have done any better.”113