Emmett Till

by Devery S. Anderson

“Who gave you permission to talk to Amanday?”

  “She did.”

  Spearman then turned toward Mandy Bradley, and in a scolding voice said, “Amanday, don’t you talk to this man and don’t you talk to anybody else unless I have cleared it with the proper authorities.”

  When Spell asked who those authorities were, both women identified them as the NAACP. Spearman told Spell he could wait until the representatives arrived if he wanted to continue talking, but he declined.

  “Never mind. I want Mandy’s answers. If she can’t give them to me without help from someone else, I don’t care to talk with her.”75

  Spell intimated that he left voluntarily, but the Chicago Defender later reported that he and Chrisler were ordered off the property by the police guard because Spell had failed to properly identify himself. Spearman immediately called attorney William Henry Huff. Decades later, Spell could still remember that Spearman was “severely perturbed” and “awfully excited and upset.”76

  In a teaser before his third installment, Spell wrote that he next hoped to interview Mose Wright. His aim was to learn the truth about Representative Charles Diggs’s story that Wright had escaped the wrath of vengeful white men by hiding out in a cemetery on the night of the trial verdict. “These stories were doing Mississippi no little damage in the eyes of this nation,” Spell wrote, and “I wanted to know what Mose himself had to say about this episode.”77

  Spell would learn nothing, but his disappointment became fodder for more conspiracies against the NAACP. To reach Wright, Spell called a phone number where Wright was staying, but someone else answered and questioned Spell about who he was and what he wanted. Spell said that he identified himself by name, and told the person on the other end that he was a reporter for the Jackson Daily News.

  “I want to find out the truth about why he left Mississippi. If he was beaten before he left and if he is afraid for his life to go back.”

  The man said he would give Spell an answer later, but the reporter insisted on talking to Wright.

  “Now let’s get me and you straight,” the unidentified man said. “You have given me the questions and I will give you the answers.”

  After the man failed to get back in touch that night, Spell reached out to him the following morning. He told Spell that he still did not have the answers but would get them later that day. However, the man never called back.78

  The drama did not stop there. Spell claimed he became the victim of intimidation also, which confirmed to him that the NAACP wielded great power in the North. When he returned to his hotel room after visiting Mandy Bradley, he found several notes under his door. Most were from Chicago reporters wanting to know his motives for coming to town. One was from someone allegedly assigned by the NAACP to check on Spell.79 In fact, Spell said the NAACP made several inquiries to the police about him, which led him to a sensational conclusion. “The speed with which the NAACP moved; the thoroughness of their network and other angles they used indicated very strongly that they could reach the highest officials within minutes.” Some of his evidence came from conversations with Chicago citizens, the truth of which he could not actually verify. A cab driver, for instance, said that he had to be extra careful in his dealings with black fares, even treating them more courteously than white riders. “At the slightest provocation,” reported Spell, “a Negro passenger would ‘get word to the NAACP.’”80

  Apparently, it was not just the NAACP that had its eyes on Spell, who claimed that within an hour of leaving Mamie Bradley’s house, black congressman William Dawson queried the police about him and his mission. For Spell, this was ironic. During the Till trial, “scores of newspapermen from all over the world visited in Mississippi. There were no reports that any of them were ‘checked’ or were even held in suspect.” However, “when a Mississippi reporter came to Chicago, even a United States Congressman wanted to know why.” Yet Dawson, one of only three black members of Congress, probably had other reasons for checking on Spell. After the three witnesses were relocated to Chicago, Diggs had placed them in Dawson’s care.81

  Spell’s Chicago visit lasted only twenty-four hours. Upon returning to Jackson on Tuesday, he traveled to the Delta and found Mandy Bradley’s husband, Alonzo. In a separate article that ran parallel to his interview with Mandy, Spell and reporter W. C. Shoemaker challenged the story that Alonzo had been beaten, blaming the rumor on the NAACP. Alonzo, they concluded, had been “used as a propaganda tool” for the organization. The farmhand insisted that “no one has laid a hand on me,” and revealed his wife had left Mississippi without telling him good-bye. His only contact with her since then was a letter sent through “some woman in Chicago” to his daughter. Alonzo, however, reported that his wife was “doing alright and being treated royally.” Unbeknownst to Alonzo, the Chicago Defender had just announced that Dr. N. A. Jacobs of Liberty Optical offered to fit Mandy with free eyeglasses after learning that she left her old pair behind in Mississippi. Alonzo believed his wife would be left alone should she return to the Delta.82

  Although Alonzo Bradley denied suffering any physical harm, he confirmed that Leslie Milam had indeed ordered him off the plantation and that he was staying with his daughter, who lived just north of Drew. Milam had evicted him, said Alonzo, because Mandy’s absence had forced him to take his meals elsewhere, thus making it difficult to fulfill his duties to his crops. A later report, however, claimed that Alonzo had been forced off the plantation at gunpoint just after Mandy left.83 It seems improbable that Milam would have expelled Bradley so quickly if revenge was not the motive. The beating story, whether true or not, did not originate with the NAACP anyway. If the story was true, Spell and Shoemaker should have understood why Bradley, still residing in the Delta, would be hesitant to talk about it with white Mississippi reporters in the wake of a high-profile racial murder trial at which his wife testified.

  After discovering Alonzo’s whereabouts, Spell placed a person-to-person call to Mandy to give her the news. Their brief exchange formed the basis of another Daily News piece, this one appearing on October 8. After she came to the phone and identified herself, Spell heard someone else pick up an extension. He asked Mandy if she knew anything about her husband’s whereabouts, to which she replied, “No.” Spell maintained that the voice sounded different, and when he identified himself as a Daily News reporter, she quickly hung up. Spell concluded his article by asking rhetorically, “Is Mandy Bradley a free person who can speak without censorship or is she a mental ‘captive?’”84

  The Chicago press tried to answer that question by immediately rebutting Spell’s sensational charges. Following Spell’s first article, Enoch Waters of the Chicago Defender issued a denial that the NAACP was holding the three trial witnesses “captive,” and maintained that they had come to Chicago of their own free will. “Chicago is a natural point to gravitate to when people get into trouble in Mississippi,” he said. This Associated Press (AP) article also appeared in the Jackson Daily News on Thursday, the same day as Spell’s second installment.85

  Mort Edelstein, reporter for the Chicago American, published a piece on Friday that not only refuted Spell’s theory but also indicated some trickery on the part of both Spell and Chrisler. Edelstein confirmed that the men had flown to Chicago in a National Guard plane, but also learned that they had told Captain Thomas Kelly, of the Prairie Avenue station, that permission to visit Willie Reed had been granted directly from the commissioner’s office. “I was led to believe that Spell was a Mississippi policeman and Chrisler was a representative of Gov. White,” Kelly said.86

  Edelstein went to the hospital to get Reed’s side of the story. Reed became nervous after Spell left and, unable to keep his food down, had to be fed intravenously. Because reporters were barred from Reed’s room, Edelstein was unable to talk to him directly. However, Reed’s mother, Edith Thomas, told him later that her son’s decision to move to Chicago was his own, although the NAACP helped with expenses.87

  Edelstein did
speak with Mandy Bradley, however, and she was not happy about Spell’s charges. “That’s the most fantastic story I have heard yet,” she said. “Nobody is keeping me here. I wanted to come here and I did, paying my own expenses. I haven’t been threatened but I don’t want to return to Mississippi.” Mose Wright responded similarly. “Well, now I guess I have heard everything. I not only came to Chicago of my own free will, but I brought my wife and my three children, too. I paid all our expenses.” Although Wright was too afraid to move back to the South, he made one resolve: “I definitely will testify at the kidnapping trial. They can’t do nothing more than kill me.”88

  When Wright talked to an AP reporter a few days later, he confirmed the cemetery story, which he said occurred on the night of September 23. Wright told the story multiple times over the next several weeks, often with inexplicable inconsistencies, but there is nothing to conclude that it originated as NAACP propaganda.89

  Cora Patton, president of the NAACP’s Chicago chapter, was equally troubled by Spell’s investigation because all of his accusations came without any attempt to directly contact the association. “If he had, he would have learned that nobody is being held captive as he has charged.”90

  Edelstein’s investigation, as detailed in the Chicago American on Friday morning, was not overlooked by Spell. An article in the Jackson Daily News, which appeared that afternoon, quoted heavily from Edelstein’s story, and Spell provided plenty of commentary. Spell was adamant that he never presented himself as a policeman. “I identified myself on every occasion when I felt necessary to do so that I was a staff member of the Jackson Daily News. I am sure the Chicago police were smart enough to check my credentials if they doubted my identity.” In 2010, Spell explained that he possessed an identification card from his days at the Jackson Clarion-Ledger where he covered criminal justice on the police beat and said that he showed this card at the Chicago police station.91 It is doubtful, however, that Spell could have identified himself as a reporter and still been given access to Willie Reed. Even the Chicago press was forbidden from seeing him.

  In his Daily News response, Spell said that his only motive was learning whether the three trial witnesses had relocated to Chicago by choice. “I do not believe they left because they were afraid [for] their lives and somebody should defend Mississippi against the wave of propaganda the NAACP is directing toward my state.” Responding to Patton’s statement, Spell explained that “the entire point of the trip was to reach these people—Wright, Reed and Mandy Bradley—without the NAACP talking for them. The very fact that I could not contact them without the NAACP intervening is further proof that these Mississippi Negroes are held mental captive if not physical captives.” Spell was skeptical that Edelstein interviewed any one of them without a “middle man” involved. “I could have interviewed these persons myself by telephone without making the trip to Chicago but I wanted to know the first hand [sic] truth without any interference.”92

  The Chicago Defender was outraged over Spell’s intrusion upon Willie Reed and demanded in its October 15 edition that the police commissioner, Timothy O’Conner, look into it. Picking up where the Chicago American had left off, Defender reporters were determined to find out more about Spell and Chrisler.

  On Tuesday, October 11, they found Reed, who had been discharged from the hospital the day before. Reed said he was surprised that Spell and Chrisler had been able to find him at the hospital, but it was more perplexing that they got in to see him. Reed’s doctor, William Cunningham, said he had stipulated that Reed receive no visitors and did not learn until the next day that the Mississippi newsmen had even been there. The Defender also looked into Chrisler, who police said had claimed to be a representative of Governor White. White’s secretary, Lula Carvery, told the paper that she did not know the man, but said he could possibly have been one of 450 honorary colonels that White had named throughout his tenure.93

  What was the motive behind Spell’s investigation? Even a cursory reading of his articles clearly shows that he had an agenda. If NAACP representatives were acting as middle men, their motive was understandable. After all, a possible kidnapping indictment against Milam and Bryant was still forthcoming, and these three witnesses could be called back to testify. White strangers from Mississippi would naturally arouse suspicion, especially if the witnesses felt fearful in the first place. All three were transitioning from a lifetime in the rural South to a new beginning in the big city, and naturally, they were overwhelmed. At no time had the NAACP actually intervened and silenced them during Spell’s attempts to speak with them, even though Spell tried to convey that impression. Had Spell really wanted to determine NAACP involvement, he could have continued his interview with Mandy Bradley and gauged her behavior before and after attorney Huff’s arrival. Clearly, what Spell saw as sinister behavior was, in reality, simply prudence.

  In 2010, Bill Spell, a very cordial and pleasant man of eighty-five, recalled those days in Mississippi as “very tense,” and called the Till murder “a terrible tragedy and a terrible blow for Mississippi.” He insists that he was displeased with the trial verdict, even back when it was rendered. In fairness to Spell, his investigation did not defend the jury, comment on the verdict, try to make a case for the innocence of Milam and Bryant, or accuse Emmett Till of any wrongdoing. It is clear that he was angered by northern depictions of Mississippi and believed that this was due primarily to propaganda by the NAACP. “It was my opinion at the time that without realizing it they [the three transplanted witnesses] were being made part of a story that was bigger than them.”94

  Yet in trying to prove his “mental captive” theory, Spell fell short. If anything, he widened the divide between the North and South, and the suspicions of each side toward the other were further validated. For all of his hard work, Spell did not stay on the stories or investigate any further. Just days after he returned to Mississippi, he quit the newspaper business altogether to accept a public relations position with an oil company. He later went on to law school and enjoyed a career as an attorney in Clinton, Mississippi.95

  Most white Mississippians did not need Spell’s characterization of the NAACP to continue to harbor distain for the organization, or, for that matter, any pro-black group. Continued protests in the North added layers of animosity to an already sensitive South, as evidenced on Sunday, October 9, when the fall festival of the Wisconsin Civil Rights Congress used the Till murder as its theme. Three hundred black and white citizens attended the event, which made the front page of the Jackson Daily News, mainly because it featured prominent Communists such as Geraldine Lightfoot, wife of Claude Lightfoot (previously convicted under the Smith Act); Samuel Horowitz; and Junius Scales. A banner headline read, “Known Communists Using Till Case in Money-Raising Drive.”96 Although the quest to end Jim Crow in the South was not at all welcomed by southern whites, tying Communists to the movement would only ensure white resolve for years to come.

  During unrelated Sunday rallies, Mamie Bradley spoke in East St. Louis, Alton, and Lovejoy, Illinois, and it was clear that none of the bad press out of Jackson from the week before had soured people up north. “Every auditorium was filled to capacity,” she reported to Roy Wilkins, yet she worried about the toll the long meetings were taking on the standing-room-only crowds. “We feel that there have been far too many speakers scheduled to participate in most cases. A program like this can very easily lose its effectiveness when the audience is an overflow crowd with hundreds of people standing for hours on end.”97 The rallies brought in over $3,450, of which $400 went to Mamie. Although she shared the podium with Medgar Evers and Jet reporter Simeon Booker, she was clearly the biggest draw. When Gloster Current worried that Mamie might be absent, perhaps due to her recent bout with exhaustion, he instructed organizers to schedule her last on the program and to get donations before her speech. In case she did not show, he reasoned, “you do not have to make the announcement until after you have taken up the collection.”98 That people were willin
g to endure the discomforts that concerned Mamie was a powerful indication that they had not grown tired of Emmett Till.

  That same day, miscommunication and poor judgment at a rally featuring Dr. T. R. M. Howard in Los Angeles created near chaos. Advertisements erroneously announced that Mamie Bradley would be in attendance, and Tom Neusom, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, booked the Second Baptist Church for the event. The church only held 2,000 people, and projections indicated that thousands more would be in attendance. As a consequence, cars came to a standstill on the street facing the church, aisles in the auditorium were crowded, and a loudspeaker was placed in the overflowing basement. Although the meeting raised over $4,300, disorganization forced hundreds of people to leave the event without donating any money. Organizers also failed to invite labor unions and Jewish organizations, whose members were anxious to attend. “All in all,” wrote Tarea Pittman, NAACP West Coast regional field secretary, “a very poor job was done of promoting the meeting in the largest center of population in our region.”99

  Outside of the NAACP, however, some creative voices began displaying their own brand of protest. On October 8, at the Jewish Cultural Club in Cleveland, the Ohio Labor Youth League performed what was probably the first original play about the Emmett Till murder.100 Reporter James Hicks also began a riveting four-part series in both the Cleveland Call and Post and Baltimore Afro-American. Hicks enthralled readers with his blow-by-blow account of the trial and his role in the dramatic search for witnesses.

  In the midst of this unabated attention, but also in the aftermath of the Spell articles, Edith Thomas, Willie Reed’s mother, told the Chicago American that she would forbid her son from returning to Mississippi for the Milam and Bryant kidnapping trial for fear that Willie’s life would be in danger. Everything he knew was on record from the first trial, she explained, and “is there if they want it.” Learning this, Governor White told the American that any decision to testify was up to the witness. Thomas’s fears, he insisted, were unfounded and “all a lot of propaganda.” Edith Thomas, like her son, had been suffering from nervous tension and even quit her job as a laundry worker. “With Willie well, and the few dollars I have saved, we’ll manage to get along.” William Henry Huff, however, said he would encourage Reed, Mose Wright, and Mandy Bradley to return for the trial and also reiterated his pledge to file $100,000 civil suits against J. W. Milam, Roy and Carolyn Bryant, and, now, Leslie Milam. This he would do, he promised, no matter the verdict.101