Because the Tri-State Defender story had been written in advance of the release of the issue of Look containing “Shocking Story,” it is clear that Huie initiated the conversation with the paper, and not the other way around, as the Defender would not have known that the article was even forthcoming. Huie had already built rapport with Defender publications and seemed proud of it. In the letter he wrote to Dan Mitch as he began working out the details for “Shocking Story,” Huie asked Mitch to stress some facts to Look’s lawyer in case the lawyer had liberal leanings. “Tell him that 16 years ago I was ‘honored’ by the NAACP; that on my wall hangs a scroll presented me by the Chicago Defender for ‘symbolizing the best in American democracy’; that the Pittsburgh Courier has raised money for me; that the American Civil Liberties Union has field actions on my behalf; and that I have the respect of virtually every literate Negro in the country.”73 Although the last boast was an exaggeration, Huie believed he had standing with the paper.
Many of the details revealed by Huie as an informant to the Tri-State Defender were identical to what was forthcoming in Look. There is an added detail about the black man who told Bryant about Emmett Till’s behavior at his store. “For his own protection, I cannot reveal his name.”74 If protecting the man was an issue, that probably meant that he was still in the South, where his safety would have been jeopardized. This is important because rumors began to surface later that the informant was one of Till’s cousins.75 These relatives were no longer in Money, however, but had all moved to Chicago just after the murder trial ended. Huie knew this as well because he went to Chicago to interview them.
Huie, as informant, completely dismissed Mose Wright’s claim that a third man stood on the porch during the kidnapping, calling it “a myth, sheer nonsense,” because Milam and Bryant would never take a black man along for a mission such as this. Nor was there a woman in the car. “It is not reasonable to believe that Mrs. Bryant would leave her two children alone in the store at 2 A.M. nor is it logical to think that Mr. Bryant would permit such.”76 Still, Huie does not explain at all how Wright could have seen a third man on the porch and heard a voice from the car if no one was there. Apparently, neither did the Defender press him on it.
As to Willie Reed’s testimony about the men, the truck, the shed, and the beating on a Sunflower County plantation, “That was a coincidence.” As Huie explained it, a truck of the same make and color as Milam’s, carrying three whites in front, and a few blacks in back, did drive onto the plantation and into the shed. “This was a fishing party. The truck backed up to the barn and a boat was moved out onto the truck.” Huie said the moaning sounds that Reed heard were only noises made by people playing around as they loaded up the boat.77
Huie’s version of the events surrounding the death of Emmett Till, both in Look and in his lesser-known but important account as an informant to the Tri-State Defender, appeared on the surface to settle the matter. Following a host of rumors, denials, stories of money, greed, and movie deals, the Till case had taken a sensational turn. As Deltans woke up to the fact that two acquitted killers lived among them, most wanted not only to cease talking about the matter but to put it behind them forever.
Shortly after the release of “Shocking Story,” a series of articles appeared in the Los Angeles–based black weekly the California Eagle, beginning with its January 26 issue. The five-part series claimed to unfold the truth about the Till murder, but the dramatic details differed substantially from Huie’s account.78
The articles were written by a journalist under the pseudonym Amos Dixon. An introductory note in the first installment described Dixon as a white southerner who had covered the murder trial in Sumner and “talked freely to those who knew what happened.”79 Unlike Huie, Dixon maintained that Milam and Bryant had accomplices, and he names them. His account aligns more closely with the testimonies of Willie Reed, Mandy Bradley, and Add Reed, which “Shocking Story” ignored completely. Midway through publication of the series, a thirty-five-page booklet appeared, titled Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till, and it told a similar story as Dixon had provided. It was written by Olive Arnold Adams, wife of New York Age Defender publisher Julius Adams. A seven-page chapter dealt specifically with the Till case.80
Dr. T. R. M. Howard was clearly the driving force behind each of these investigative endeavors, and a primary source of information. Details he provided in published speeches are quoted or paraphrased by Dixon and Adams, but not acknowledged. For example, Howard’s revisionist description of Emmett Till’s wolf whistle claims that Carolyn Bryant did not even hear it. This is repeated by Dixon and Adams. So, too, are Till’s cries of “Lord have mercy, mama save me,” which Howard claimed Willie Reed heard the dying boy utter from inside the shed, but which Reed never stated in his courtroom testimony.81
Howard had been a columnist for the California Eagle in 1933 and 1934, and Loren Miller, who took over ownership of the paper from Charlotta Bass in 1951, had been friends with Howard for over twenty years. Howard also had a connection with Adams, made evident by the fact that he wrote the foreword to Time Bomb. He even referred to a book in progress that he and Adams were writing together. For whatever reason, however, that book was never published.82
It appears that Adams likely relied exclusively on Howard for her narrative. Dixon, on the other hand, seems to have done some independent research, for at times he differs from both Howard and Adams. Some of the details in each of their works contradicts early statements of witnesses and others, and, unfortunately, the authors never explain why. In that regard, the inconsistencies raise more questions than they answer. However, the most important revelations of Dixon and Adams concern accomplices. The names of Levi Collins and Henry Lee Loggins were well known to the press by the third day of the trial, but Howard later learned of the involvement of another black man. At first, Howard could not identify him by name, but in the month after the trial, he announced from Los Angeles that the mysterious third man on the back of the truck was someone named “Hubbard.” Dixon identified him as Willie Hubbard.83 Hubbard had been a friend of Loggins, and the two men had dated a pair of sisters. When Loggins referred to him in 2001, he remembered him as Joe Willie Hubbard.84
Dixon names Loggins and Hubbard as the two on the truck who held down Emmett Till to prevent him from escaping. For reasons unknown, when Adams referred to them in Time Bomb, she used pseudonyms, even though their real names had already appeared in the press by this time. Loggins became “Wiggins”; she referred to Hubbard as “Herbert”; and Frank Young, the field hand who first tipped off Howard about the beating of Till on the Drew plantation, became “Fred Yonkers.” Dixon says that the white men in the front of the truck with J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant were Leslie Milam “and another brother who has never been completely identified.” Adams does not name them, but simply refers to them as “two other persons” who were in the cab of the truck.85
Unlike Adams, Dixon reported gruesome details of the beating and death of Emmett Till. The source of this information would have been Loggins’s father, Dewitt, who got the story directly from his son. In his open letter to Attorney General Brownell and FBI director Hoover, published in the Washington Afro-American the previous November, Hicks identified Dewitt as a reluctant but willing source.86 For the Eagle article, Dixon either talked to Dewitt Loggins or else learned the story from Howard. Either way, Dixon’s description is particularly disturbing:
With Henry Lee Loggins holding the victim, the Milams led by J. W. began beating Emmett about the head with their pistols. He began to cry and beg for mercy. That only whetted their hatred. They smashed his head in, beat it to a pulp.
Emmett fell to the floor, still crying and begging. Their frenzy increased. The blows fell faster. The frenzy mounted higher. The killers kicked and beat their victim. Finally the cries died down to a moan and then ceased.
The Milams and Bryant thought their victim was dead.
A new panic seized
them. What to do with the body? J. W. rose to the occasion: throw the body in the Tallahatchie river.87
As for Howard, his role in seeking justice in this case was nearing an end. He had recently learned that he was on a “Special Death List” of 100 people slated to be killed off by white supremacists by the first of the year. He had just sold all 720 acres of his property outside Mound Bayou for $200,000, and was spending less time in Mississippi. When rumors surfaced that he was moving from the state, he assured a curious reporter that “I have no intention of leaving Mississippi at this time.” By April, however, he decided to move to Chicago.88
The Dixon and Adams reports, as sensational as they were, barely caused a ripple, but the alleged involvement of Collins and Loggins in the Till murder was not entirely forgotten, even in the aftermath of Huie, who completely eliminated them from the story. On February 28, 1956, a delegation from the National Council of Negro Women came to the FBI office in Washington, DC, and met with Hoover and Louis B. Nichols, assistant to the director. One of the women, Juanita Mitchell, spoke impassionedly about several issues. With regard to the Till case, she wanted to know why the Bureau had not conducted an investigation in response to Hicks’s November letter to Brownell and Hoover. The FBI had decided back in December not to act upon it.
This exchange prompted Hoover to find out why Collins and Loggins had never been interviewed by the Criminal Division, and why this information had never been presented to him in a brief. F. L. Price explained to Hoover about the September 30 memorandum that had requested an investigation to determine whether a civil rights violation had occurred. Price approved the investigation on October 4, and the Memphis office turned in its report eight days later, which was based in part on the Memphis agents’ interview with Robert Smith.89
Mitchell’s comments renewed discussions of Hicks’s letter, which had been written after the FBI’s October decision to take no action. Price again preferred not to act. “After having read the open letter which Hicks wrote and was published in the Afro-American and being subject to Mrs. Mitchell’s emotional tirades, I frankly doubt the advisability of interviewing Hicks unless it is a matter of last resort,” he wrote. “The very moment that we interview Hicks we can expect to have a story that we are investigating the Till case.” Price clearly wanted to avoid that, but he advised Hoover about possible action that the Bureau could take, all of which Price was still reluctant to pursue:
I am wondering if we are on sound ground to send a memorandum to the Attorney General and ask for instructions and then go ahead in the absence of instructions and interview Hicks. It seems to me that if we do want to go ahead and seek to verify whether or not Collins and Loggins were in the Charleston jail as alleged by Mrs. Mitchell, we might do this without interviewing Hicks. After all, Hicks got his information from Dr. Howard and if we interview Hicks we would then have to go to Howard.
If you feel that we should go ahead on this in the absence of a directive from the Department, would it not be better to locate Collins who was interrogated by the attorney for the Chicago defender [sic] and whose statement was published in the papers, interview the cook at the jail who allegedly fed these individuals and verify that Collins and Loggins were working in Mississippi while the trial was going on.90
No further discussion about possible action exists in the FBI’s Till file, which indicates that the entire matter was dropped at this time. However, a few weeks later, black leaders in Mississippi made a last-ditch effort to get Loggins to open up. In mid-March, a writer researching the Till case learned that the field hand had been jailed in Sumner on a theft charge. Loggins was still working for J. W. Milam at the time, and it was Milam who issued the complaint. Apparently Milam had obtained two discarded trucks and kept them on the plantation he was managing. Loggins allegedly sold the scrap metal from the vehicles to R. L. and J. C. Smart, two brothers living in Glendora. When Milam spotted the three black men cutting up the metal with a torch, he confronted them at gunpoint and had all three arrested.91
Black leaders hoped that the rift between Loggins and Milam would finally prompt Loggins to tell everything he knew about the Till murder. They immediately devised a plan to clear Loggins of the charge, move him out of the area, and provide him with a home, job, and money. When told about the efforts to help him, Loggins agreed to go along with the arrangement.
Bail for Loggins was set at $700 and was quickly paid. The group retained Abe Sherman, a white lawyer from Clarksdale, to help free Loggins, and the next day Sherman drove to Sumner. When Sherman learned that Milam was involved in the case, he grew reluctant, but kept with his client nevertheless.
Although Tallahatchie County sheriff Harry Dogan tried to release Loggins, surprisingly, Loggins refused to leave the jail. “That boy don’t want to come out,” Dogan told the group waiting outside. When a black newsman went in to persuade Loggins to leave, Loggins, whom the Daily Defender reporter described as “frightened, dirty, and badly in need of a haircut,” screamed out, “I don’t know you. I want to see Mr. Milam.” Loggins finally agreed to leave the cell only if his father came to get him. At that point, Sherman went home to Clarksdale, and reporters went looking for Dewitt Loggins.
After searching for two hours, they found him on a plantation near Minter City. He agreed to go with them to Sumner but wanted to wait until dark. However, when the men went to his home at 7:00 P.M. to pick him up as planned, he was gone. “He had to go away with his boss,” his wife, Sarah, informed them. “He told me to tell you he just had to go.” While explaining this to the reporters, she made a gesture in the direction of a bayou nearby. The group then went to Glendora to find a friend of Henry Lee’s who would go to the jail and try to convince him to leave.
When they arrived back at the Sumner jail, Sheriff Dogan and attorney Sherman were waiting. Loggins’s friend went inside and talked to the frightened inmate for half an hour, but Loggins told him to tell the men outside to “come back tomorrow.” Dogan, still waiting outside himself, called Loggins to the jail window.
“These folks have spent all day trying to help you,” Dogan said. “You can come out if you want to.”
“No sir, I don’t want to come out,” Loggins yelled back.
Dogan, frustrated, told a reporter to try talking to the inmate. The newsman then tried to get Loggins to sign the bond, but Loggins refused.
“Why won’t he come out?” the bewildered reporter asked a white official standing nearby.
“It’s simple, boy,” he answered. “J. W. Milam put him here and told him that when he wanted him out he would get him out.”
Loggins remained adamant and told the men that he would not come out, even if they came back for him the next day. Finally, the group left.92
The following day, Loggins was arraigned before Judge James McClure and sentenced to six months in jail for obtaining money under false pretenses. J. W. Kellum, attorney for the Smarts, was able to secure the two brothers’ freedom by arguing that Loggins alone was responsible for the theft. “These two niggers came to Milam’s place in broad daylight with blow torches to cut up that iron, and no nigger in his right mind would come to Milam’s place to do wrong.” Loggins did not have a lawyer, and Mississippi law did not require that one be appointed for him. As Loggins began his sentence, a relative told the Daily Defender, “That boy knows too much about the Till child for his own good. He should leave Mississippi and never come back.”93 Eventually, that is what happened.
That same month, Dr. T. R. M. Howard spoke to a crowd of 3,000 in Chicago at the Greater Bethesda Baptist Church at a meeting sponsored by the United Packinghouse Workers of America. He introduced Willie Reed to the crowd and described him as ill and without friends since moving to Chicago. In response, several in the audience donated cash on the spot to help the struggling teen.
During the meeting, Ralph Helstein, union president and a member of the Civil Rights Committee for the AFL-CIO, called the Montgomery Bus Boycott, now in its fourth month, a “
demonstration of passive resistance in the best tradition of Mahatma Ghandi [sic].” Howard also relayed a message from Martin Luther King Jr., who had been leading the boycott almost from the start. King’s message through Howard was to “tell the folks in Chicago we have enlisted in this fight for the duration.”94
King, of course, saw both the fight and its duration in the context of the efforts in Montgomery. But his words would prove prophetic in describing something much larger and grander, a burgeoning movement that would later be defined by a decade of triumph, to be sure, but one also marked by struggle, confrontation, and bloodshed. In time, King would see that bigger picture, and eventually came to foresee his own martyrdom, which would occur just twelve years after the bus boycott began. In doing so, he would link both himself and the boy from Chicago as martyrs in that movement. “Today it is Emmett Till, tomorrow, it is Martin Luther King. Then in another tomorrow it will be somebody else.”95
The boycott in Montgomery was a continuation of a grassroots momentum that had begun a few months earlier. There was no turning back after the world saw Emmett Till’s battered face in Chicago and heard the words “not guilty” echo out of Sumner. For the civil rights movement to succeed, however, it had to move forward and focus on its ultimate goals of freedom and equality for all. As a consequence, the succeeding generation would learn little about the lynching of the Chicago boy. Yet the brutal nature of the crime and the injustice tied to it meant that it could not stay buried forever. A resurrection was inevitable, and Emmett Till eventually reemerged into the public consciousness. This happened simply because it had to.
For some, however, the fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago never really went away. Nor could he.
10
Never the Same
Anyone can speculate on what the likely fate of the Emmett Till case figures would have been had this tragic murder been avoided. The temptation to do so is hard to resist. What if the seven youths who broke from the sweltering heat of the cotton fields on August 24, 1955, had simply arrived in downtown Money after the café, to which they were originally headed, had already opened? Would they have bypassed the Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market altogether? If so, would Emmett Till now be a grandfather somewhere in a Chicago suburb? Mose Wright would certainly have lived out the rest of his days in Mississippi, as he had intended, and Willie Reed and Mandy Bradley would have remained as obscure in the rural Delta as they were otherwise destined to be. Perhaps J. W. Milam’s only indiscretions would have been the occasional bootlegging for which he was already known. Roy Bryant’s store might have stayed open a few more years, but technological advances in cotton harvesting were fast making his field-hand patrons disappear. Carolyn Bryant’s fame would have remained local, her only notoriety being her teenage beauty titles, both of which would have been long forgotten by now.
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