Amos Dixon addressed the attempt to hide the murder but said nothing about cleaning up the shed. He said that they stripped Emmett of his clothing long after they left Sunflower County. They then dumped the body in the river. After that, they returned to the Milam plantation, and, at this point, they recruited Levi Collins to wash blood out of the truck. Someone told Collins that the blood came from a deer and that they wanted to hide evidence from the game warden in case he came around. Collins was also told to burn the clothes, which he did. He tried to burn Till’s shoes, but the fire could not consume them. Collins then buried them instead.60
Milam told a similar story to Huie, who wrote that “for three hours that morning, there was a fire in Big Milam’s back yard: Bobo’s crepe-soled shoes were hard to burn.” Oudie Brown said that Levi Collins pointed to a shoe on the ground and told him that it had belonged to the murder victim. Henry Lee Loggins, despite denying any involvement, said that someone showed him a partially burned shoe and said that it belonged to a boy Milam had killed the night before.61 Dixon is clearly wrong that this happened at the Leslie Milam–managed plantation because all witness testimony regarding the shoe points out that they saw it in Glendora. This makes sense, because if Collins was recruited only to clean up the mess, the men would have had to have gone to Glendora to get him. During his investigation, Dale Killinger learned that many people in Glendora recalled seeing the truck, and seeing Collins, Loggins, and Otha Johnson lounging nearby or cleaning up the mess.62
The origin of the cotton gin fan used to weigh down the body has never been definitively determined. Milam told Huie that they secured the fan from the Progressive Ginning Company. Huie was specific about the location. “This gin is 3.4 miles east of Boyle: Boyle is two miles south of Cleveland. The road to this gin turns left off U.S. 61, after you cross the bayou bridge south of Boyle.” In 1985, Roy Bryant said that the group never went to Boyle, but he failed to say where the fan came from. This was technically true; even if they went to the Progressive gin, it was not actually in Boyle. Dixon said that it was taken from an abandoned gin familiar to Leslie Milam but not to J. W. However, Dixon did not identify it or its location. After law enforcement officials examined the shed on the Drew plantation on day two of the trial, they stopped at an old cotton gin located in Itta Bena and discovered that the fan was missing. It is unknown why they stopped at that particular gin. If they were acting on a tip, that fact was never disclosed, and they never determined that this was the correct gin. In a film shown at the Emmett Till museum in Glendora, former Glendora resident Robert Walker recalled seeing the gin fan thrown into the truck while it was parked near the M. B. Lowe cotton gin, which sat close to Milam’s house within that village.63 The gin now houses the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC). A marker placed outside the building states that the “old metal fan” used to weigh down Emmett’s body “was taken from this gin.” That has never been determined, and, so far as is known, the only statement from Milam or Bryant was supplied to Huie.
When and how were Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam arrested?
There is no confusion about Roy Bryant’s arrest, which was detailed in court by Sheriff George Smith of Leflore County and also to defense attorneys before the trial. On Sunday afternoon, August 28, Smith and his deputy, John Cothran, drove to Money and stopped at the Bryant store at about two o’clock. They learned from other family members who were there (not Carolyn) that Roy was still sleeping. Bryant got up, and Cothran took him out to the car, where Smith questioned the suspect. Bryant admitted to taking the boy from Mose Wright’s home but said he let him loose after Carolyn told him that he had the wrong one. Smith then arrested Bryant and took him to the Leflore County jail.64
Oudie Brown, interviewed for Stanley Nelson’s PBS documentary, The Murder of Emmett Till, claimed that he witnessed Sheriff Smith arrest J. W. Milam at a store in Minter City.
“J. W., I got a writ for you. Is you goin’?” Smith asked.
“Hell no. That’s shit you talking,” responded Milam.
The sheriff left but went back within a couple of hours. “J. W. Milam, I come at ya. I’m gonna carry you dead or alive. You just well get ready to go.”65
This alleged encounter never occurred, however, although it is possible that Brown was remembering another occasion when Milam was arrested, perhaps for bootlegging. On Monday, August 30, the day after Bryant’s arrest, the Greenwood Commonwealth reported that Milam went to the sheriff’s office around noon to turn himself in. This was done, according to what Milam told Bonnie Blue, so that Milam could keep an eye on Bryant and make sure Bryant refrained from “running his mouth off” and stuck to the script they had come up with, which was probably the story that they took Emmett Till but let him go. When Killinger interviewed John Cothran during his investigation, Cothran recalled that on the day of Milam’s arrest, he spotted Milam outside the sheriff’s office, pointed him out to Smith, and that Smith said, “Oh dog gone let’s go get him. That’s Milam.”66
One interesting story recently came to light from Bobby Dailey, who sold Milam his 1955 Chevy pickup. GMAC became worried that with Milam in jail awaiting trial for murder, he would be unable to pay for the truck; to protect themselves, representatives from GMAC called Dailey and informed him that they were going to withdraw financing for the truck. GMAC also knew that the truck had become evidence. After the acquittal with the men out on bail awaiting kidnapping charges, Dailey went to visit Milam at a family store in Itta Bena and tried to work out a different finance plan; Dailey suggested that Milam apply for a loan from the Bank of Charleston instead. To Dailey’s surprise, Milam wrote him a check for the full amount, and Dailey never saw him again.67 Milam probably used the money he had received from William Bradford Huie for his “confession” in Look magazine.
Were Levi “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Lee Loggins kept hidden in jail during the trial?
On September 18, the day before the trial began, reporter James Hicks learned of the involvement of Levi “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Lee Loggins in the Till murder and was told while seeking information in Glendora that the two men were being held in jail.68 Although these rumors persisted over the next several days, by Thursday, September 22, members of the black press covering the trial followed a lead that someone at the jail in Charleston reported seeing Collins there. The informant said that both men were being held for two weeks for “investigation” because they were seen cleaning blood out of the truck that they said came from killing a deer out of season. On Friday morning, September 23, white reporter Clark Porteous, assisting black reporters in the endeavor to verify the accuracy of the jail story, talked to prosecutors Gerald Chatham and Robert Smith about arranging a search at the jail. The two attorneys informed Porteous that they had already searched the jail twice and that neither man was there. They looked not only in Charleston but also searched another jail. The sheriffs of both counties “raised hell” about what they believed was an improper intrusion.69
There is no reason not to believe that Chatham and Smith tried but came up empty, as they had demonstrated all week a tremendous effort to secure and interview the surprise witnesses from the Drew plantations and made an examination of the barn, as superficial as that was. It is likely that Tallahatchie County sheriff Strider learned that black journalists had received a tip from an inmate and moved the men somewhere else. One of Milam’s and Bryant’s defense attorneys, J. J. Breland, told graduate student Hugh Stephen Whitaker in 1962 that Collins and Loggins had been kept in jail during the trial.70
One story that has been touted as proof that at least Loggins was in jail during the trial came from Loggins during his interview with Keith Beauchamp. Loggins told a story about how Milam had given Loggins some scrap iron but used that gift as an excuse to charge him with theft. Loggins was at a gambling house in Glendora when someone told him that Milam wanted to see him outside. When Loggins went out, Milam and the Tallahatchie County sheriff were there.
“You
’re going to jail,” Milam said to Loggins.
“Going to jail? For what?”
“You got that iron without my consent.”
Loggins was stunned. “J. W., you gave me that iron.”
The sheriff sided with Milam, placed Loggins in handcuffs, and took him to jail. He spent the next six months locked up in Sumner.71
Loggins did spend six months in the Sumner jail for stealing iron from J. W. Milam, but this did not occur at the time of the trial, but several months later, beginning in March 1956. This was reported in full in the Daily Defender. Loggins and two other black men living in Glendora, brothers R. L. and J. C. Smart, were seen by Milam cutting up the metal with a torch. He approached all three with gun in hand and had them arrested. The Smarts, whose lawyer was J. W. Kellum, got off, while Loggins was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail.72
In sum, Loggins and Collins were most likely jailed during the investigation and most of the trial, but the iron episode involving Loggins was a separate and much later incident. Loggins never told Beauchamp just when his jail time occurred, at least on film, but the assumption that it was the smoking gun to show where he was during the trial is mistaken. By the time of the interview forty-five years later, Loggins probably did not remember exactly when the theft charge occurred anyway.
NOTES
Preface
1. Elizabeth Loftus, “Make-Believe Memories,” American Psychologist 58, no. 11 (November 2003): 868.
2. Daniel Bernstein and Elizabeth Loftus, “How to Tell If a Particular Memory Is True or False,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 4, no. 4 (2009): 371.
Chapter 1
1. Lillie Neely Henry, comp., and Jean Conger May, ed., A History of Tallahatchie County (Charleston, Miss.: The Mississippi Sun, 1960), 5, 26.
2. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Knopf, 1956), 31–32; Vernon Lane Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865–1890 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), 13.
3. Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 19; Mamie Bradley, “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment one, Daily Defender (Chicago), February 27, 1956, 5; Illinois Guide & Gazetteer, Prepared Under the Supervision of the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), 495; Summit Heritage (Summit, Ill.: Summit Bicentennial Commission Heritage Committee, 1977), 29.
4. Maurice Isserman, Journey to Freedom: The African-American Great Migration (New York: Facts on File, 1997), 62–64; Eric Arnesen, Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), 1. For more on the migration, see Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Knopf, 1991); Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Random House, 2010).
5. Arnesen, Black Protest, 2.
6. Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), 361.
7. James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 166.
8. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 65–66. For more on the riot of 1919, see William M. Tuttle Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York: Atheneum, 1970); Chicago Commission on Race Relations, Negro in Chicago.
9. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 3.
10. 1930 US Census, Cook County, Illinois, Village of Summit, Enumeration District 16-2193, sheets 1A–22A, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, film no. 2340237.
11. Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Ill.), Nature Bulletin No. 500-A, September 29, 1973.
12. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment one, 5; “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment two, Daily Defender (Chicago), February 28, 1956, 5; “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment four, Daily Defender (Chicago), March 1, 1956, 5; “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment five, Daily Defender (Chicago), March 5, 1956, 8; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 46–47, 49. In her earlier memoir, Till-Mobley said her parents separated when she was thirteen, but in her 2003 autobiography she said this occurred when she was eleven. When her mother remarried on March 2, 1933, Mamie was eleven years old. Therefore, her later recollection is the more accurate. For the marriage of Alma Carthan to Tom Gaines, see file no. 1363987, Cook County, Illinois Marriage Index, 1930–1960 [database online], Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2008.
13. Mamie Bradley, “I Want You to Know What They Did to My Boy,” speech delivered October 29, 1955, Baltimore, Washington Afro-American, November 5, 1955, 20, and Baltimore Afro-American, November 12, 1955, 6, reprinted in Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, eds., Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965 (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2006), 139 (hereafter, references to this speech will cite Houck and Dixon only).
14. Mary Strafford, “‘When I Find Time I’ll Cry,’ Till’s Mother Tells Afro,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 29, 1955, 2.
15. 1930 US Census, Cook County, Illinois, Village of Summit, sheets 16B–17A.
16. “‘Not Bitter’ Says Mother of Till,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 8, 1955, 27. For more on race relations in Chicago, see Grossman, Land of Hope.
17. Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 69–70.
18. Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 106–9; Wheeler Parker Jr., Crosby Smith Jr., and Simeon Wright, author interview, February 7, 2007, Argo, Ill., comments by Parker.
19. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment one, 5; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 24–25.
20. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment one, 5; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 3, 25.
21. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment two, 5; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 3, 13–14; James G. Chesnutt to William Bradford Huie, November 9, 1956, William Bradford Huie Papers, Cms 84, box 38, fd. 349, Ohio State University Library, Columbus (hereafter cited as Huie Papers).
22. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 14–16. In 1956, Mamie said she and Louis went out for banana splits on their first date, but never mentioned the integration incident. See “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment two, 5.
23. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment two, 5; “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, Daily Defender (Chicago), February 29, 1956, 5; Louis Till and Mamie E. Carthan marriage record, file no. 1659634, Cook County, Illinois Marriage Index, 1930–1960.
24. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 12, 26, 30, 97; “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, 5.
25. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 30. When discussing her marriage in 1956, Mamie did not indicate that she and Louis lived with Alma after their wedding, but only says that they “got a little place to ourselves, hoping to be as independent of our folks as possible” (“Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, 5).
26. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, 5.
27. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 4, 6; “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, 5.
28. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, 5; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 4, 11.
29. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, 5.
30. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 14–16.
31. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 16. Mamie says that the judge gave Louis a choice between going to jail or joining the army, but Mamie may be misremembering some of the details. In a 1955 interview, she said Louis had been drafted into the army, and she made no
mention of military service being an alternative to jail.
32. “Father of Young Till Died for His Country,” New York Amsterdam News, October 1, 1955, 7; see also “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment three, 5; “Mrs. Bradley Raps ‘Expose’ on Till’s Father,” St. Louis Argus, October 21, 1955, 1.
33. National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938–1946 [database on-line], Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2005; Chesnutt to Huie, November 9, 1956. In 1956, Mamie erroneously said that Louis was drafted in March 1943. See “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment four, 5.
34. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 27.
35. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 28; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Prosecutive Report of Investigation Concerning . . . Emmett Till, Deceased, Appendix A—Trial Transcript, February 9, 2006, 207 (hereafter cited as Trial Transcript).
36. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment four, 5; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 16–17. Mamie wrote in 2003 that after Louis entered the army, she had no further contact with him until he showed up on her doorstep for his unannounced visit. It was then that they talked of reconciling and that Louis promised to begin sending family financial support. Mamie said she was hesitant about getting back together, and had not made up her mind before the visit ended (Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 17). During a question-and-answer session with reporters for the Washington Afro-American in October 1955, however, she acknowledged that she and Louis had separated before he went into the army, but said they had patched up their differences through corresponding. “We were going to go back together after his discharge” (“Mrs. Mamie Bradley Routs False Reports,” Washington Afro-American, November 5, 1955, 21). In her 1956 version of the story, as told to the Daily Defender (Chicago), Mamie is consistent with what she told the Washington Afro-American in that she and Louis had already decided, through correspondence, to rekindle their relationship shortly after Louis entered the army. Mamie is also incorrect in Death of Innocence in saying that it was this visit that prompted Louis to begin sending family financial support. As noted earlier, Louis had signed up for this on August 1, 1942, less than a month after his induction. Mamie thought Louis’s visit occurred in 1943, but because she was off by one year regarding his date of induction, I assume that this visit actually took place in November 1942. My assumption is likely accurate because Mamie said that after the MPs discovered that this trip was unauthorized, they took Louis away and sent him overseas immediately. Louis’s records show that he began serving in the European theater of operations on January 14, 1943, making Thanksgiving 1942 the only time when such a holiday visit could have occurred.
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