They contributed to my defense fund—at least they say they did. I never got half of what they say was contributed. I don’t know what happened to it, but we never got it. Since then, some of those friends have been making excuses. I got letters from all over the country congratulating me for my “fine Americanism”; but I don’t get that kind of letters any more. Everything’s gone against me—even the weather, which has hurt my cotton. I’m living in a share-crop [house] without water in it. My wife and kids are having it hard.102
Huie also reported that Milam had been refused a gun permit. After the sheriff learned that Milam was carrying a firearm illegally, he made him give it up, despite Milam’s claim that he had been threatened. Sunflower County sheriff E. W. Williams confirmed the report, saying that he told Milam that “no one has a right to carry a gun without a permit.” Despite Milam’s pleas, “I told him I had been threatened once or twice myself. I didn’t see that he was in any danger.”103
Williams also confirmed that after Milam took up residency near Doddsville, the sheriff’s office had been involved in “an incident or two” with him, but Williams did not elaborate. Milam appears to have maintained his penchant for bootlegging, however. According to locals, in 1960 Milam learned of a whiskey still secluded in the eastern hills of Charleston in Tallahatchie County. He went to the spot, assembled it in his truck and trailer, and hauled it away in broad daylight on Highway 32 through Charleston’s Main Street and into the town square. “To think of all we did for him,” a Till trial juror said in 1962, “and he goes and does something like that.” Milam was arrested but not prosecuted.104
Ygondine Sturdivant, longtime resident of the town of Glendora, recently recalled her own run-in with Milam not long after Milam’s acquittal for murder. Ygondine was the wife of philanthropist Michael P. Sturdivant, who in December 1955 had offered to build Beulah Melton a home after Elmer Kimbell shot and killed Beulah’s husband, Clinton, at a Glendora gas station.
Ygondine was working at the polls during a local election when Milam, whom she did not recognize, came in to vote. He told her that he also wanted a ballot for his wife.
“Is she parking the car?” Sturdivant asked, assuming she must be nearby.
“No, she’s home. I also want to vote for my mother.”
“Is she bedridden?”
“No, she’s fine. I’ve always done it this way. I’ve always voted for my family,” Milam explained.
Sturdivant knew this was a common, yet illegal, practice, but she was determined not to let it happen under her watch. When she refused Milam’s request for multiple ballots, he got angry and demanded to talk to her boss, a man by the name of Love.
“Mr. Love isn’t here right now,” Sturdivant told him.
“I will be back,” shouted Milam. “You can count on that!”
When Love returned, Sturdivant told him about the big, angry voter she had just turned away. Love then checked the books and noticed the man’s name.
“Do you know who that was? It was J. W. Milam!”
Sturdivant was shocked but had no regrets about holding firm to the law, even when up against someone as intimidating and notorious as Milam.105
For three years after the trial, Milam held several menial plantation jobs. In 1958, he was living in a tenant house on a plantation owned by Citizens’ Council member J. E. Branton in Greenville. On Valentine’s Day, the New York Post reported that Milam had been seen standing in a bread line waiting to receive rations from the Welfare Department. The Pittsburgh Courier, a black weekly newspaper, picked up on the story also. The director of the Washington County welfare department would not confirm or deny the Post report, but Milam adamantly declared it to be false. Despite admitting to hard times a year earlier when talking to Huie, Milam bluntly told an inquiring reporter for Jet magazine, “Quote me as saying the New York Post is a goddam liar. I’m standing here with’a ass-pocket full of money.” Also contradicting what he had told Huie, he insisted, “Everybody in Mississippi has been nice to me.” However, “the northern papers have talked about me enough and I’m tired of it.” Temporarily disabled with a broken leg, Milam admitted that he had applied for unemployment compensation a few months earlier but had been turned down. “They said a broken leg wasn’t reason enough for it. I don’t know why.” Poor weather had hurt his crops, and he was not working at all, but he claimed that he was about to start a new job managing another plantation.106
The Milams later moved to Orange, Texas, but returned to Greenville after only a few years. On Easter Sunday, 1962, Juanita Milam and her five siblings hosted a fiftieth wedding anniversary dinner for her parents, Albert and Myrtle Thompson, at the Thompson home on Purcell Street. Myrtle died the following year while J. W. and Juanita were still living in Texas, but before Albert died in 1965, they returned to Mississippi to help care for him. They would make their home at 615 Purcell Street in Greenville, near the Thompsons, where J. W. would live out the rest of his life. The house was a converted black Methodist church.107
Milam would have a few run-ins with the law while living in Greenville. On January 6, 1969, he was convicted in city court for writing a bad check, and fined $55. Three years later, on April 12, 1972, the same court fined him $300 and sentenced him to sixty days in jail for using a stolen credit card. Four months after that, he was convicted of assault and battery, fined $30, and sentenced to ten days in jail.108
By the time the Milams returned to Mississippi a decade after the Till trial, the outrage over the murder had subsided, and they were able to live quietly, for the most part. Milam eventually found work as a heavy equipment operator, but that ended due to declining health. A neighbor, Maude Carter, temporarily housed friends at her home at 613 Purcell from June to November 1978 while they were getting ready to buy their own home. The father of that family recalls that the Milams were the only white people living in the neighborhood. J. W. and Juanita’s children went to visit periodically, but J. W. seemed passive and stayed to himself. He did not interact with people on the street and spent much of his time outside on the porch. His German shepherd, who roamed the yard enclosed by a chain-link fence, was trained to bark and lunge “like he would tear your head off” if someone walked by while the dog was within the yard area that led to the front door. If the dog was inside the gated area near the driveway, passersby could walk by the house without any reaction from the animal. “I’ve never seen a dog trained like that in my life,” recalled the former neighbor.
As to Milam’s life in the black section of Greenville, “That was his place and he seemed satisfied to live there and die there,” said the neighbor. Milam appeared to be a shell of the man once so intimidating that he could coax his field hands into helping with murder.109
Clearly Milam’s health was declining at that time. After a very long and painful illness, he succumbed to cancer two years later on New Year’s Eve, 1980, at age sixty-one.110 He and Juanita were rumored to have divorced at some point, but this was not true. Their marriage was probably not a happy one, however, and the couple maintained separate bedrooms.111
Because J. W. never held a permanent job, Juanita began working as a hairdresser at the Greenville Beauty Salon in the 1960s. In 1971, National Beauty Salon week was proclaimed for February 14–20 by Greenville mayor Pat Dunne, and Juanita served as chairwoman. Local Affiliate No. 3 of the Mississippi Hairdressers and Cosmetologists Association sold raffle tickets for a television to raise money for a dialysis machine for Washington County Hospital. In 1975, Juanita served as president of the affiliate. The group raffled off another television that year, this time helping the American Cancer Society. Juanita told readers of the Delta Democrat-Times that the winner need not be present at the April 15 drawing to be held at the Delta Beauty College. Clearly, Juanita felt at ease in her local community. She continued to work at the salon until owner Thelma Wood retired and closed the shop around 1990.112
Although she enjoyed a long and steady career, Juanita’s life was never t
he same after the murder of Emmett Till, and she appeared genuinely sad most of the time. Her depression had not been a part of her life prior to the notorious lynching that thrust her family into the spotlight. Despite her personal suffering, she was generous with her family and friends and managed to maintain many of her lifelong interests. She was an avid reader and football fan. An active Methodist, she bought a keyboard and learned to play a few hymns to help her congregation enjoy the benefits of music.113
Juanita never remarried after J. W.’s death, nor did she allow herself any further romance. She later sold her home on Purcell Street and moved in with a sister, Carrie Clements, who was widowed in 1984. They later moved together to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where they lived together in a home Juanita purchased on Old Spanish Trail Road.114
After J. W.’s death, Juanita became estranged from Roy and Carolyn Bryant, and they never spoke again. In fact, Juanita and Carolyn (whom Juanita always described as a “drama queen”) never considered themselves friends, even before the Emmett Till murder. They saw each other, but did not speak, at the funeral of Milam and Bryant sibling Dan Milam, who died in 1999. Juanita stormed out of the service after Milam and Bryant family members became involved in a confrontation over blame in Emmett Till’s death.115
Juanita, who was politically liberal, maintained interracial friendships, and her best friend for many years was a black neighbor woman. Juanita suffered a stroke in 2008, and in October of that year, her oldest son, Horace “Bill” Milam, died at age fifty-seven. After several years of declining health, Juanita died in Ocean Springs on January 14, 2014, at age eighty-six. Although she and J. W. had purchased double plots at the Greenlawn Memorial Gardens in Greenville, Juanita was buried in Ocean Springs.116
The simple obituary of J. W. Milam that appeared in 1980 escaped media attention. Roy Bryant’s death, which came in 1994, would have gone unnoticed as well had it not been for the astute eye of journalist Bill Minor. Minor published a piece that noted Bryant’s role in the Till case soon after the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and Bryant’s local paper, the Bolivar Commercial, each ran short, standard obituaries.117
Bryant’s life, like that of his half-brother J. W., was filled with hardship. After a boycott by blacks forced the closure of his store three weeks after his release from jail, the family moved in with Carolyn’s mother in Indianola in Sunflower County. There, Roy reportedly found work as a mechanic. After laboring at odd jobs for seventy-five cents a day, he attended welding school nine miles away in Inverness at the Bell Machine Shop. “Roy’ll have it tough,” predicted Milam in 1956. “It takes a long time to learn welding and by the time you’ve learned it, you’ve ruined your eyes.” He was right. In 1985, Bryant reported to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger that he was, in fact, legally blind. He suffered from optic nerve degeneration in both eyes, and his left eye was further damaged after a small piece of steel became lodged in it.118
Bryant had other ambitions before settling on welding school. In May 1956, the Delta Democrat-Times, responding to rumors that Bryant had become an Indianola policeman, learned that he had sought a job with the local force, but was turned away. “He applied with us,” confirmed Indianola police chief Will Love, “but he does not work here.”119
Six months later on November 19, Roy and Carolyn Bryant were riding as passengers in a car driven by Carolyn’s eighteen-year-old brother, James Holloway, in Greenville, when they were involved in a head-on collision at about 1:45 A.M. The second vehicle was driven by a black airman named William Macon, who was stationed at Greenville Air Force Base. The Bryants and Macon were all treated for minor injuries at Greenville’s General Hospital and released. The four-paragraph article reporting the accident mentioned nothing of the Bryants’ notoriety in the Till case, although the Chicago Defender shortly learned of the story and reported that fact.120 That same day, perhaps for reasons brought on by the accident, Carolyn gave birth to her third son, Frankie Lee.121
By the fall of 1957, Roy was working as a welder in Morgan City, Louisiana. The Bryants shortly moved to Orange, Texas, where daughter Carol Ann was born on August 14, 1959. Because Carolyn had been sick with the measles during her pregnancy, Carol Ann was born deaf. Sometime later, the family relocated to Vinton, Louisiana, just thirteen miles away, where Roy continued to weld for a steel company. They bought a home there and lived in Vinton until returning to Mississippi in 1973 at the encouragement of Roy’s mother, Eula Bryant. For a time, Carolyn’s mother, Francis “Frankie” Jones, lived with them in Vinton in a converted apartment in the garage.122
The Bryants tried to live a normal, low-key life, and, at one level, succeeded. Their three boys were typical youngsters, regularly bringing home snakes, snails, and lizards, all to the horror of Carolyn, who hated such creatures.123 Roy Jr. graduated from Vinton High School in 1970, where he played football. He shortly married, and his wife gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter, in June 1971. This made Roy Sr. a grandfather at age forty and Carolyn a grandmother at thirty-six. Thomas Lamar, a member of the school band, graduated in 1972 and immediately joined the air force. Carol Ann attended the Louisiana School for the Deaf in Baton Rouge from 1965 to 1973.124
When Roy, Carolyn, and the two youngest children left Louisiana in 1973 and returned to Mississippi, they relocated to Ruleville, in Sunflower County. Roy went back into the grocery business by taking over a small store that had been run by family members. Son Frank, a football player at North Sunflower Academy, earned his high school diploma in 1975. Carol Ann began attending the Mississippi School for the Deaf in Jackson, but spent every other weekend and holidays at home. She graduated in 1979.125
At some point, Roy and Carolyn Bryant’s marriage developed serious problems, and it became unbearable for Carolyn. Even her mother-in-law, Eula Bryant, saw it. Eula, whom Carolyn described as tough and outspoken, asked Carolyn in front of Roy many times why she stayed married to him.126 Eula died in August 1974. A year later on August 15, one day after Carol Ann’s sixteenth birthday and one day before Lamar’s twenty-second, Carolyn left Roy, and two months after that, she filed for divorce. Their divorce papers describe Roy as having been guilty of “habitual cruel and inhuman treatment of her and of habitual drunkenness.” Perhaps Roy’s demons had concerned his mother because she had once endured similar abuses from her second husband, Henry Bryant. Carolyn asked for sole custody of Carol Ann, the complaint read, because “said child needs the care and guidance which only a devoted mother can give.” Roy failed to dispute any of the allegations. When the divorce was finalized two months later on October 28, 1975, sole custody of Carol Ann went to Carolyn. Roy was granted visitation rights and ordered to pay $75 per month in child support beginning November 1. A lump sum of $6,300 for alimony was due by December 1.127
After their return to Mississippi, the Bryants managed to continue a low-profile existence, despite living in close proximity to the site of the Till murder. In fact, in 1977, both Roy and his brother James Bryant were listed as two of five challengers to Ruleville’s incumbent aldermen. In the end, the brothers lost, each receiving the least number of votes of all the candidates. James garnered 53, while Roy received only 45. The winners received between 270 and 530 votes.128 A black man who lived in Ruleville as a youth in the 1980s and saw a film about the Till case in school was shocked to see footage showing Roy Bryant as an accused killer. He had always known Bryant only as a local grocer.129
In 1979, Carol Ann graduated from her school in Jackson. One year later on May 17, 1980, ironically, the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Roy married Vera Jo Orman, an accountant at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. They remained in Ruleville.130
In 1978, Roy Bryant lost his permit to accept food stamps for one year because he was allowing customers to purchase nonfood items with their coupons. In 1982, the inspector general’s office of the US Department of Agriculture learned that Bryant had been purchasing food stamps at a discount for cash
and then selling them back to the government at full value. On several occasions between September 2 and December 8, 1982, Special Agent David L. Thomas went to Bryant’s store undercover and received cash for hundreds of dollars in food stamps. In October 1983, Bryant was indicted on five counts of food stamp fraud, pleaded not guilty, and was scheduled for a December trial. On December 7, however, Bryant changed his plea to guilty on two counts in exchange for the government dropping the others. He attended a hearing on December 13 in Greenville, Mississippi, presided over by Judge William C. Keady. Before accepting the plea bargain, Judge Keady told Bryant that officers of the probation service would “check out your family, your educational and work background, whether or not you have a criminal record,” and would seek to learn “your reputation in the local community from which you come.” On February 3, Bryant returned to court for sentencing, and through the pleadings of his attorney, he was given a three-year probation and a $750 fine. Bryant had retained state senator Robert L. Crook of Ruleville as his counsel. Crook had been H. C. Strider’s cosponsor of the 1966 bill that proposed to relocate Mississippi’s blacks out of state.
Crook told the court that fifty-three-year-old Bryant “is a good citizen of Ruleville, who is disabled and has been in very poor health a number of years, who has attempted to work despite that circumstance, and to be gainfully employed in the course of running his own store.” He was caring for both his wife and disabled sister and was an honorably discharged veteran of the army. As to the charges against him, however, “He knows he has made a mistake.” Bryant promised to obey the law respecting food stamp regulations going forward.
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