Emmett Till

by Devery S. Anderson

  21. Monday’s headlines, mentioned above, were: “Armed Trio Seizes Visitor in Mississippi,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 29, 1955, 1; “Leflore County Officers Checking Kidnap Charge,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, August 29, 1955, 1; “Charge Greenwood Storekeeper with Abducting Youth,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), August 29, 1955, 2; “Chicago Negro Youth Abducted by Three White Men at Money,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, August 29, 1955, 1; “White Storekeeper Held in Abduction of Negro Youth,” Jackson Daily News, August 29, 1955, 1; “Charged Negro Boy Abducted,” Laurel (Miss.) Leader-Call, August 29, 1955, 1; “Delta Officers Study Abduction of Negro Youth,” McComb (Miss.) Enterprise-Journal, August 29, 1955, 1; “Kidnapping Charges as Boy Seized,” Jackson State Times, August 29, 1955, 1.

  22. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment seven, 8; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 119–20.

  23. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment seven, 8.

  24. Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till, 212; “Kidnapped Boy Whistled at Woman,” Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1955, 2; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 121.

  25. Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Parker.

  26. Wright, “I Saw Them Take Emmett Till,” 69.

  27. “A Wife in Hiding Writes Back to Hubby—‘Come On Up Here,’” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), September 17, 1955, 5.

  28. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment seven, 8.

  29. “Kidnapped Boy Whistled,” 2.

  30. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment seven, 8; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 126.

  31. “Muddy River Gives Up Body of Slain Negro Boy,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 1, 1955, 4; Clark Porteous, “Mississippi Hunt for Clews [sic] Goes On,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 2, 1955, 5.

  32. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment seven, 8; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 126.

  33. Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 133.

  34. Trial Transcript, 102, 111. Hodges said in court that after he told his father about the body he found in the river, his father told Mims, and that Mims in turn told the sheriff. Robert Hodges would have no firsthand knowledge of what happened after he told his father about his discovery. Since Mims said he was told about the body by a boy in the area, and that someone else called the sheriff, it is safe to assume that Mims’s version of events is the more accurate.

  35. Trial Transcript, 99, 114–17.

  36. Trial Transcript, 285; “Missing Chicago Negro Youth Found in Tallahatchie River,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, August 31, 1955, 1.

  37. Trial Transcript, 149–50; Porteous, “Grand Jury to Get Case,” 4.

  38. Trial Transcript, 287.

  39. James Featherston, “White ‘Deplores’ Slaying in Note to NAACP Which Is Creating National Issue,” Jackson Daily News, September 1, 1955, 1.

  40. Trial Transcript, 287.

  41. “Muddy River Gives Up Body,” 4.

  42. “Missing Chicago Negro Youth,” 1; Trial Transcript, 151, 173–75; “Resume of Interview with John Ed Cothran.” Cothran’s interview was not the only source indicating that Strider’s son was there, as the younger Strider affirmed this to filmmaker Stanley Nelson as well. However, Clarence Strider overplayed his role when talking to Nelson and claimed that he used his boat and, with others, went into the river to get the body out. No source contemporary to the event backs up his story; court testimony is very specific about who got into the boat and whose boat was used. See Stanley Nelson, prod., The Murder of Emmett Till (Firelight Media, 2002).

  43. “Resume of Interview with Mose Wright”; Wright, “I Saw Them Take Emmett Till,” 69.

  44. Trial Transcript, 70–71, 73–74; “Resume of Interview with John Ed Cothran.” For more on the role of the black undertaker who “is always and forever called to handle things after the white man slaughters somebody,” see Rebecca Mark, “Mourning Emmett, ‘One Long Expansive Moment,’” Southern Literary Journal 40, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 126.

  45. Trial Transcript, 71–72, 153.

  46. Wright, “I Saw Them Take Emmett Till,” 69; Trial Transcript, 155.

  47. Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 135; Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till, 236; “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story, installment seven, 8; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 126–27.

  48. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment seven, 8; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 126–27; Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 135; Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till, 236. For an analysis of the role of motherhood as an integral part of disseminating and shaping the story of Emmett Till, see Ruth Feldstein, “‘I Wanted the Whole World to See’: Race, Gender, and Constructions of Motherhood in the Death of Emmett Till,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 263–303.

  49. Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 135–36; Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till, 236–37; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 130.

  50. “Negro Boy Was Killed for ‘Wolf Whistle,’” New York Post, September 1, 1955, 5.

  51. Trial Transcript, 76, 77, 84–86, 298–304.

  52. “Sheriff Believes Body Not Till’s; Family Disagrees,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 4, 1955, 4.

  53. Trial Transcript, 76–77.

  54. Wright, “I Saw Them Take Emmett Till,” 69; Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 135.

  55. Jones, interview, for Eyes on the Prize.

  56. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment seven; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 130.

  57. Joe Atkins, “Emmett Till: More Than a Murder,” Jackson Clarion–Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 20A; “Slain-Boy’s Body Arrives Here; Sets off Emotional Scene at Depot,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 3, 1955, 4.

  58. Jones, interview, for Eyes on the Prize. Mamie Bradley, speaking in 1955, said that Miller refused to keep the body in his funeral home overnight, and quoted him as saying, “I wouldn’t have any place in the morning and perhaps I wouldn’t be alive by morning” if he did (Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 136). Bradley obviously heard this story from someone in Mississippi, perhaps Jones or Mose Wright, but it is consistent with what Jones said in 1985. Mississippi state senator David Jordan recalled a similar fear in Miller while Miller testified at the murder trial. “He was respected and looked up to by all of us, but when I saw him that day he was scared to death. . . . He was just giving a description of the body, but his shirt was wet, like someone had just poured water on it” (Mamie Fortune Osborne, “An Interview with David Jordan on Emmett Till,” Southern Quarterly: A Journal of Arts & Letters in the South 45, no. 4 [Summer 2008]: 140. See also David L. Jordan, with Robert L. Jenkins, David L. Jordan: From the Mississippi Cotton Fields to the State Senate [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014], 58).

  59. “Body of Negro Found in River,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 1, 1955, 1.

  60. Wright, “I Saw Them Take Emmett Till,” 69.

  61. Trial Transcript, 77–80, 181–82; “Slain-Boy’s Body Arrives Here,” 4.

  62. “Body of Negro Found in River,” 1.

  63. Mattie Smith Colin, “Mother’s Tears Greet Son Who Died a Martyr,” Chicago Defender, September 10, 1955, 1; “Protest Mississippi Shame,” New York Age Defender, September 10, 1955, 1.

  64. Myrlie Evers-Williams, author telephone interview, April 23, 2014.

  65. Roy Wilkins, telegram to Governor Hugh White, August 31, 1955, James P. Coleman Papers, Accn. No. 21877, box 23, fd. 3, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Archives and Library Division, Special Collections Section, Manuscript Collection, Jackson (hereafter cited as Coleman Papers).

  66. “Body of Ne
gro Found in River,” 1; “Find Kidnaped Chicago Boy’s Body in River,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1955, 2.

  67. H. L. Stevenson, “Fisherman Finds Body of Chicago Negro Boy in Tallahatchie River,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, September 1, 1955, 1.

  68. Hugh White, telegram to Roy Wilkins, September 1, 1955, Coleman Papers, box 23, fd. 3.

  69. “Mayor Daley Protests Slaying of Chicagoan,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 2, 1955, 3; “Ask Ike to Act in Dixie Death of Chicago Boy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 2, 1955, 2.

  70. “Ask Mississippi Governor to Denounce Killing of Boy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1955, 2.

  71. “Body of Negro Found in River,” 1; “‘A Den of Snakes’ Youth’s Mother Calls Mississippi,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 1, 1955, 2.

  72. “Muddy River Gives Up Body,” 4; “Body of Negro Found in River,” 1. For a thorough treatment on why the federal government did not intervene, see Jonathan L. Entin, “Emmett Till and the Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights,” unpublished paper presented at Stillman College, September 16, 2005, copy in author’s possession.

  73. J. Edgar Hoover to John H. Stengstacke, September 2, 1955, FBI file on Emmett Till. Correspondence in this file reveals that Hoover and other FBI officials responded to numerous letters calling for a federal investigation, basically citing the same reasons as those in the Stengstacke letter.

  74. “White Calls Boy’s Death ‘Murder; Not Lynching,’” Jackson Daily News, September 2, 1955, 14; “Kidnap Murder Stirs Delta,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 2, 1955, 1; “Boy’s Slaying Held Murder by Gov. White,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 2, 1955, 1.

  75. George Murray, “‘Wolf Call’ Blamed by Argo Teen,” Chicago American, September 1, 1955, 4.

  76. “Negro Boy Was Killed for Wolf Whistle,” 12.

  77. “Tuskegee to Probe Slayings of Three Negroes in State,” Jackson Daily News, September 1, 1955, 12.

  78. “Kidnap-Murder Case Will Be Transferred to Tallahatchie,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, September 1, 1955, 1; “Muddy River Gives Up Body,” 4; “White Orders Full Probe of Delta’s Kidnap-Murder,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 2; J. Todd Moye, Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945–1986 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 84.

  79. Hugh White, telegrams to Honorable Gerald W. Chatham and Honorable Stanny Sanders, September 1, 1955, Coleman Papers, box 23, fd. 3.

  80. “Muddy River Gives Up Body,” 1, 4.

  81. Gerald Chatham, telegram to Honorable Hugh L. White, September 1, 1955, Coleman Papers, box 23, fd. 3.

  82. “Officer Fears Actions Build Up Resentment,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 4, 1955, 1.

  83. Porteous, “Grand Jury to Get Case,” 4.

  84. Chester Marshall and James McBroom, “White Men Face Double Indictment for Kidnapping, Murdering Till Boy,” Jackson Daily News, September 6, 1955, 3.

  85. Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case” (Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 1963), 118, reprinted as Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Murder and Trial of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 195. The 2005 autopsy report verified that Till’s body had been embalmed and that “numerous venting incisions” were made in the skin and on the bottom of his mouth. See Prosecutive Report, 109. See also Mark, “Mourning Emmett,” 126.

  86. “Charleston Sheriff Says Body in River Wasn’t Young Till,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 4, 1955, 2; Huie, Wolf Whistle, 26. A photo exists of men taking the casket out of the pine box to load onto a hearse after it arrived in Chicago. Because padded paper covered the casket, one writer at the scene reported that “five men lifted a soiled paper wrapped bundle from a huge, brown wooden mid-Victorian box at the Illinois Central Station in Chicago Friday and put it into a waiting hearse” (Colin, “Mother’s Tears Greet Son,” 1; Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative [Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002], 29). The writer obviously thought that the “bundle” was Till’s body, and did not realize that what the men were actually carrying was a casket under padded paper. The padding was probably used to protect the casket during the journey and to allow a more secure fit within the pine box.

  87. “Stratton Acts in Dixie Killing,” Chicago American, September 2, 1955, 1.

  88. “No Developments in Negro Slaying,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, September 2, 1955, 1.

  89. “Try to Determine Spot Where Negro Was Slain,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, September 3, 1955, 1; “Officers Press Hunt in Slaying of Negro,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 4, 1955, 19.

  90. “Muddy River Gives Up Body,” 1, 4.

  91. R. R. Shurden to J. Edgar Hoover, September 5, 1955; Mr. Tolman to Mr. Parsons, September 9, 1955, both in FBI file on Emmett Till.

  92. “‘Were Never into Meanness’ Says Accused Men’s Mother,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 2, 1955, 35; “Bryant’s Brother Claims Charges Are All ‘Politics,’” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 4, 1955, 19; “Suspect Credited with Saving Lives,” Jackson State Times, September 1, 1955, 11A.

  93. “Negro Bishop Asks 2 Days’ Mourning as Slaying Protest,” Jackson Daily News, September 2, 1955, 1; “Newspapers Over State Blast Murder of Negro,” Jackson Daily News, September 3, 1955, 1; “Mississippi’s Reaction to Boy’s Death,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 3, 1955, 11.

  94. “A Just Appraisal,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, September 2, 1955, 1.

  95. “Just Appraisal,” 1; Davis W. Houck, “Killing Emmett,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8 (Summer 2005): 234. For an excellent treatment of the changing position of Mississippi journalists in reporting the case, see Davis Houck and Matthew Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008).

  96. “10,000 at Bier of Slain Boy,” Chicago American, September 3, 1955, 1; “Murdered Youth’s Kin Hysterical at Station,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 2, 1955, 3. Knowledge that the pine box was opened at the train station comes from a photograph that shows that the lid and front panel had been removed, while men position themselves to lift out the casket. Removal from the box was obviously necessary in order for the casket to fit in the hearse. This scene is further collaborated in the eyewitness account cited earlier that erroneously called the padded casket a “soiled bundle” that the author believed was simply Till’s body (Smith Colin, “Mother’s Tears Greet Son,” 1; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 29).

  97. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 131.

  98. “Stratton Acts in Dixie Killing,” 1.

  99. Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 136.

  100. Simeon Booker, “Best Civil Rights Cameraman in Business Dies,” Jet 30, no. 2 (April 21, 1966): 29; Simeon Booker, with Carol McCabe Booker, Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter’s Account of the Civil Rights Movement (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 59. In his later memoir, Booker said that he and Jackson waited all night at the train station. In 1966, he said they waited at the funeral home. I am using his earlier recollection here in telling his story.

  101. Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till, 238; Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 136.

  102. Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 137; Trial Transcript, 185, 211–12. Decades later, whenever Mamie Till-Mobley talked about the day she viewed the body, she told several details differently from those I provide in the text above. In her 2003 autobiography, she said that she could smell the odor of her son’s decomposing body several blocks away as she and her companions drove toward the funeral home. In a speech given in the fall of 1955, cited above, however, she said she began to notice the odor after she entered the room where she viewed it. This sounds much more reasonable, a
lthough admittedly, not as dramatic. It is possible that she could smell the body outside as she approached the funeral home the second time, because by then, the casket had been open for some time, but she was not likely several blocks away. Her later recollections about examining the body also differ from her earliest ones. In her memoirs and other interviews after the mid-1980s, she says that she began her examination at Emmett’s feet and worked her way up. In her earliest speeches, she indicates that she started with his face. See Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 132–36; see also her statements in two documentaries: Nelson, Murder of Emmett Till, and Keith Beauchamp, prod., The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005). Because her earlier descriptions in speeches and on the witness stand agree with each other but not with her later ones, I have concluded that her recollections decades after the fact are less accurate.

  103. Booker, “Best Civil Rights Cameraman,” 29; Simeon Booker, Black Man’s America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1964), 3; Booker and Booker, Shocking the Conscience, 60.

  104. Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 137.

  105. John H. Johnson, Succeeding against the Odds (New York: Warner Books, 1989), 207, 240; Brian Thornton, “The Murder of Emmett Till: Myth, Memory, and National Magazine Response,” Journalism History 36, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 100.

  106. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment one; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 140; “Slain-Boy’s Body Arrives Here,” 4. For various interpretations about the meaning and effects of Mamie Bradley’s decision to show her son’s body, see Jacqueline Goldsby, “The High and Low Tech of It: The Meaning of Lynching and the Death of Emmett Till,” Yale Journal of Criticism 9, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 245–82; Christine Harold and Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 263–86; Mark, “Mourning Emmett,” 126–28; Courtney Baker, “Emmett Till, Justice, and the Task of Recognition,” Journal of American Culture 29, no. 2 (2006): 111–24; Valerie Smith, “Emmett Till’s Ring,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, nos. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 2008): 151–61.