Wade Milam, of Spartanburg, South Carolina (no relation to J. W. Milam), scolded the magazine as well for “lauding this beastly big, 14-year old brute to high heaven.” The conduct of Emmett Till was, Milam declared, simply “a case of like father-like son.” Life did not publish his letter, but Milam did send it to the editor of the Jackson Daily News, where it appeared on October 21.130
Other letters were forthcoming, making it safe to conclude that Dr. Walker and Wade Milam represented the views of more than a few Mississippi whites. It was probably more acceptable to accuse Emmett of inheriting some deviant trait directly from his father than to publicly accuse all black men of possessing a rapist gene. The latter was still a widely believed notion in the South, however, and here the lines distinguishing one view from the other were easily blurred.
Before the murder trial, the Emmett Till case was all about a “wolf whistle,” an innocent flirtation, to be sure, but one that brought to the story an element of sex nevertheless. Once the press coverage of Carolyn Bryant’s court testimony emerged, together with the new revelations about Louis Till, it had fast become a case of rape or something just short of it. Just how a grand jury in a Greenwood courtroom would view it was yet to be seen.
8
Clamor, Conflict, and Another Jury
Before agreeing to speak exclusively for the NAACP, Mamie Bradley had already made commitments to address meetings sponsored by two other organizations. The first was a rally in Washington, DC, slated for Sunday, October 16, at the 6,100-seat Uline Arena, organized by the Bible Way Church. On the day of the event, fire marshals and police turned away several thousand hopeful attendees, which inspired a hastily planned second meeting for later that night. Mamie could hardly avoid mentioning the Louis Till controversy, which had been headline news only the day before, but her remarks were brief. “Thank God, Emmett never knew and never asked” about his father’s fate, she told her audience. For the crowd of sympathizers gathered to hear her, however, that story was not an issue. The 10,000 or so people she addressed throughout the day donated over $4,000, allowing the host pastor, Reverend Smallwood Williams, to expand into six major cities his grandiloquently named National Prayer Mobilization Against Racial Tyranny and Intolerance in Mississippi and Elsewhere.1
Mamie and her entourage, which included Elizabeth Wright, Bishop Isaiah Roberts, and Rayfield Mooty, received a shared stipend of $1,000, plus their expenses paid. While Elizabeth was in Washington, her husband, Mose, was speaking for the NAACP in Dayton and Columbus, Ohio. Wright captivated his audience at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Dayton with details of the Till kidnapping, but he also took a moment to defend himself against criticisms launched earlier by some of his former neighbors in Money, Mississippi, who had accused him of giving in too easily to the abductors. His answer to them, and anyone else who might be wondering, was certainly cogent. “It didn’t make any sense to fight when a man has a .45 in his hand.” He shared the stand with Jet correspondent Simeon Booker. The meetings were successful, raising $1,000 in Dayton, and $911 in Cleveland.2
Before his guests arrived in Washington, Rev. Williams tried to arrange it so that Mamie could appear before the US Senate subcommittee on civil rights, but its chairman, Missouri senator Thomas Hennings, informed them that he was leaving for his home state and that the other two members were out of town. That may have been fortuitous—the chairman of the full Senate Committee on Internal Affairs, which oversaw Hennings’s subcommittee, was Mississippi senator James O. Eastland, who had just helped leak the Louis Till story. Hennings apologized, however, and promised to meet with Mamie another time.3
Mamie’s trip to Washington coincided with more international backlash against the trial verdict, while at home calls for federal intervention continued picking up steam. At the Vatican, the semiofficial newspaper Osservatore Romano urged Catholics in the United States to fight the racist atrocities that were becoming more and more prevalent. “Such crimes are so many—one recently involving a youth still remains unpunished. The color of this smudge is so very often the color of blood rather than black.”4 The following day, October 18, New York City Council president Abe Stark addressed a group at an interfaith rally in the Central Park Mall and called on Congress to pass an antilynching law. The Till trial, he said, should push the federal government toward an obligation to all of humankind and inspire a “responsibility to democracy” that could guarantee the civil liberties of everyone.5
This was exactly why Mamie wanted to meet with someone in Washington, preferably an official at the White House. Before she left the city, she sought an audience with Maxwell Rabb, Eisenhower cabinet secretary and White House liaison on minority issues, but this, too, was unsuccessful. Rabb, it turned out, was busy preparing for visits to Maryland and New York. This was unfortunate because Rabb was one member of the administration who showed a genuine concern about the conditions of African Americans and other minorities. Later that week, however, Rabb told an audience at a meeting of the United Negro College Fund in Chicago that the Department of Justice was making a “painful” and “careful scrutiny” of the case. The Till murder, he assured the group, had been of “great concern” to the Eisenhower administration.6
William G. Nunn, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, suggested in an October 28 letter to Rabb that someone from within the cabinet issue a statement addressing the atrocities surrounding the murder. “If we can get no more than a declaration from Mr. Brownell’s office that the [Department of] Justice deplores the Till incident as un-American and vicious and a betrayal of American principles before the world, then we could shake a little story from this.” Such an affirmation, Nunn believed, would prove comforting to millions of American citizens.
Rabb’s response three days later was sympathetic, yet cautious. “I certainly agree with you that this subject should be tackled in one way or another and I like your suggestion a lot,” he assured his friend. However, he believed that “an official statement” could be dangerous. Constitutionally, it might be misconstrued as an infringement upon states’ rights, “and even though a statement would not violate this, it makes the problem very touchy.” Still, Rabb promised to pass Nunn’s suggestion along to the Department of Justice.7
President Eisenhower was still recovering from his September 24 heart attack, but he probably would have quashed such a statement had anyone in his administration been inclined to issue it. Although he was far more progressive regarding civil rights issues than he has typically been portrayed, he was nevertheless pragmatic and aware of southern sensibilities.8
Nevertheless, pressure for federal intervention in the Till case was mounting. Mamie did not let up either. As she visited the sights of the city following her appearance at the Uline Arena, she found the US Capitol especially meaningful. After she climbed the steps of the building and took a moment to gaze at it, she pointed optimistically at the domed structure. A press photo capturing that moment appeared on page one of the October 22 Chicago Defender under the caption, “Maybe I can get help here.”9
It was this kind of publicity, however, that created uneasiness at the Department of Justice. One official feared that Mamie’s speech at the Uline Arena, which sat just two miles from Justice Department offices, might put more pressure on the federal government to take on the case.10 He was right. Just two days after the meetings, New York representative Edna F. Kelly urged FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to “conduct a complete investigation of the kidnapping and murder of the fourteen year old boy, Emmett Till.” Hoover’s response was no different from the numerous others he had issued. “For your information, facts relating to the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till were presented to the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice which advised that this Bureau does not have jurisdiction or authority to conduct any investigation in this matter.”11
That same day, however, the most dramatic call yet for a federal probe occurred right in the nation’s capital. Fifty black citizens from Ch
icago, seven of whom were ministers, demonstrated through Washington all the way to the White House in a protest against government inaction in the case and the plight of southern blacks in general. They carried signs declaring “We have waited 336 years for equal rights” and “Down with the cotton curtain.” The delegation, led by C. W. Barding of the Victory Baptist Church was orderly, but asked to meet with Vice President Richard Nixon. When that failed, they tried to see Attorney General Brownell. This was also unsuccessful, but six members of the group gained an audience with Arthur Caldwell, chief of the civil rights department. He assured them that the Department of Justice had no plans to intervene. The protesters, however, promised that they would return in even greater numbers if their demands for an investigation were not met.12
All of this was creating a predicament for Hoover. As he continued to stand by the decision of the Justice Department, he also had to respond to recent actions by Mississippi governor-elect J. P. Coleman. Coleman had already vowed to introduce a bill after his January inauguration that would prohibit federal agents from investigating black voter suppression in Mississippi unless the alleged abuses specifically violated the US Constitution. For Hoover, the dilemma meant finding a way to keep the lines dictating legitimate probes crystal clear, while also maintaining an understanding about jurisdictional limitations, especially where such limitations concerned the Till case. Because the public could not understand why the Till murder failed to fall under the federal kidnapping or civil rights statutes, Hoover suggested that Brownell run a series of explanatory articles in major US newspapers.13
While federal officials were answering a steady stream of demands throughout the country and protesters continued to cry out for justice nationwide, the first real battle in the aftermath of the Till murder trial had already been won, quietly and without fanfare, in the unlikeliest of places by the most unsung heroes anywhere. A small advertisement appearing inconspicuously in the October 19 issue of the Greenwood Morning Star hinted of that victory: “FOR SALE—Grocery Store. Stock and new fixtures. See Roy Bryant, Money, Miss. or M. L. Campbell, Minter City.”14
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, black sharecroppers in Money who had been Roy Bryant’s bread and butter before his arrest now refused to patronize his store. After his September 30 release on bond, he returned to work, but to no avail. “We had it open for three weeks and didn’t clear $100,” explained Bryant to inquiring reporters thirty years later. “I saw the handwriting on the wall.”15 After the store’s closure, the Bryants moved to nearby Indianola, in Sunflower County, and, for the time being, Roy worked odd jobs to scrape out a living.16
When she returned home from Washington, DC, Mamie Bradley had only a few days to rest before starting a grueling two-week speaking tour throughout the Midwest and East Coast. Just before she left, Chicago was the scene of a grizzly triple murder involving three young boys. Robert Peterson and brothers Ike and John Schuessler, all between eleven and thirteen years of age, were found naked and beaten in the woods in a suburb outside the city. Mamie, knowing full well the pain consuming both families, took time to wire consoling messages to the grieving parents. “My heart goes out to you in your darkest hours of earthly despair. May God and his Angelic host abide with you and his Holy Spirit comfort you.” In the hope that these families could escape the agony of injustice that Mamie had not, she offered her “sincere prayer that justice will inflict its severest penalty upon those criminally responsible.” This justice would be long in coming, however, and not before another tragedy occurred. Anton Schuessler Sr., father of two of the murdered boys, died of a heart attack just twenty-six days after the killings while undergoing shock therapy for depression. The murders remained unsolved until 1995, when sixty-two-year-old Kenneth Hansen was tried and convicted for the forty-year-old slayings. Hansen died in prison in 2007.17
Mamie Bradley’s new role as a public figure who had endured an unspeakable loss no doubt positioned her as a comforter to many others who mourned, as well as an inspiration to people simply anxious to hear her story. Yet her wisdom and judgment over her own affairs soon began to be tested. Sometime between her Washington visit on October 16 and her first tour stop in Gary, Indiana, four days later, Mamie developed misgivings about Rayfield Mooty over what seemed to be his attempt to cash in on her misfortune. Mooty, who had been collecting fees as Mamie’s traveling companion, wanted to make his role binding and even permanent. At his urging, Mamie reluctantly accompanied him to the office of attorney Levi Morris to draw up a contract, the provisions of which made Mooty and Bradley partners for the next twenty years. She would receive 50 percent of the monies collected, Mooty would get 40 percent, and 10 percent would go to Morris. Before signing the agreement, Mamie sought the advice of her own lawyer, William Henry Huff. The attorney, later describing the deal as simply “a hustle in the name of Till,” instructed Mamie to discharge Mooty immediately, which she shortly did, replacing him with her father toward the end of her tour.18
The mother of the victim by herself could not satisfy everyone still anxious to gather and hear about the injustices of her son’s murder, and seven NAACP events held around this same time featured speakers other than Mamie. They were successful, collecting nearly $14,000 in donations. Rallies sponsored by labor unions and churches raised countless dollars for other organizations as well. One of those meetings, held on Sunday, October 23, was a small event at New York City’s Lawson Auditorium, sponsored by the Cosmopolitan Community Church.
The meeting featured trial witness Willie Reed, who received a standing ovation before answering questions posed by Bishop Robert Hines. Some of Reed’s remarks repeated his courtroom testimony, but he also shared a story that did not come out in the trial. A day before Reed testified in Sumner, defense attorneys took him into their offices, where he was asked to identify J. W. Milam, who had his “legs propped on the lawyer’s desk, smoking a big cigar.” The next day they had him do it again. “They had another big baldheaded man sitting next to him. They tried to mix me up this way, but I told them that [Milam] was the man sitting in the second seat.” Reed assured the crowd that he was ready to go back to Mississippi to testify before the grand jury in the kidnapping phase of the case (contrary to his mother’s wishes; Edith Thomas had told the press a few weeks earlier that she would not allow him to return). The hearing was scheduled to take place in just two weeks. After the meeting, Reed, with a police guard by his side, shook hands with the entire audience of 400 as each person in attendance filed past him one by one.19
After her appearance in Gary, Mamie went on to Grand Rapids, Michigan; Des Moines, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; Wichita, Kansas; and then back to Indiana, where she headlined a rally in South Bend. From there, she spoke at three gatherings on the East Coast, then went to Akron, Ohio. To close the tour, she made a third trip to Indiana, this time to a meeting in Indianapolis on November 4. She earned honorariums of well over $1,500 and helped the NAACP take in over $5,600.20 Four days after the Indianapolis meeting, she was scheduled to begin a fourteen-city West Coast tour in Seattle.
In response to the Till case, the NAACP had already garnered more support than it had over any other incident since its founding forty-six years earlier. New memberships, renewals, and donations were unprecedented, and letters from both black and white supporters flooded the offices. An editorial in the November issue of the Crisis, the official magazine of the organization, tried to remind its readers, over a month after the verdict, that “not since Pearl Harbor has the country been so outraged as by the brutal, insensate lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till. And the unconscionable verdict of the Sumner, Mississippi, jury which freed the boy’s accused killers.” Not only was this felt in America, “but throughout the world, in Europe as well as in Africa and the Orient.”21 Was there something deeper at play than just this one murder? It seemed that all of the racial crimes and inequities of the past now cried out for justice on the world stage. Something big seemed to be looming just over the horizon.<
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In that spirit, the Mississippi state convention of the NAACP began in Jackson on Saturday, November 5. Over 2,500 delegates met at the Masonic Temple, where Clarence Mitchell, the organization’s chief lobbyist, announced a list of goals that included integration and an end to the poll tax. He defined the Till case as a lynching, and castigated Mississippi law enforcement officials as being “so mired down in prejudice that, even when known criminals are accused of a crime against colored people, juries will not convict them.”22 The meeting, one of the largest gatherings of blacks in the state’s history, was undoubtedly a success at one level, but astute supporters could not ignore the fact that in just a few days a grand jury in Greenwood would begin to consider kidnapping indictments against J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant. Southern whites were hardly friends of the NAACP as it was, and now the men about to meet in Leflore County would have on their minds fresh, impassioned criticisms of their way of life, as well as the NAACP’s plans to dismantle it.
The following day, Mose Wright and Willie Reed boarded a train for Mississippi for their appearances before the grand jury in Greenwood. Journalists got word that the pair would arrive in Jackson, certainly a convenience, since several reporters were in town for the NAACP convention. However, they got off in Winona instead, arriving at 7:25 P.M. Ruby Hurley arranged a ride and accommodations for the men, but perhaps because of miscommunication, the weary travelers hired a taxi for the twenty-eight-mile drive to Greenwood instead.23
That night, the Jackson convention concluded with a powerful speech by Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the Brown v. Board of Education case from the year before. He called the Till murder a “horrible example of terrorism tactics being practiced against law-abiding citizens.” He then put forth the NAACP’s strategy to increase the black vote and, on the heels of Brown, force integration of the University of Mississippi, including the admittance of blacks to the varsity football team. As to the Till case, he had specific questions for Tallahatchie County law enforcement officers. Since the jury doubted that the murder victim found at the river was Emmett Till, “Whose body was it? What steps are being taken to find out who is guilty of (murdering) whomever it might be?”24
Emmett Till Page 31