Emmett Till

by Devery S. Anderson

  68. “Threats Are Voiced as Trial Date Nears,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 11, 1955, 13.

  69. Street, “Emmett Till Case,” 10; David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 120.

  70. “Defendants Refuse to Pose Before TV,” Jackson State Times, September 19, 1955; Paul Holmes, “A Way of Life Going on Trial in Till Case,” Chicago Tribune, September 18, 1955, 6.

  71. Wakefield, author telephone interview; Dan Wakefield, email to author, June 20, 2009.

  72. John Herbers, “Sleepy Sumner Surprised by Way World Watching Pending Till Trial Today,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 18, 1955, 1; “Defense Predicts State Cannot Prove Murder,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, September 18, 1955, 1.

  73. John Herbers, author telephone interview, December 15, 2006. Herbers’s story is also told in Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi (New York: Knopf, 2003), 319. In his interview with me, Herbers said he had forgotten the name of the Morning Star publisher, and he does not mention it in Hendrickson either. However, Houck and Grindy point out that the man in question was Virgil Adams, who at the time of the Till trial was still with that paper. In an article published in the Morning Star four days after the trial concluded (discussed later), Adams accused Emmett Till of attempted rape. See Houck and Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press, 181; Virgil Adams, “A New Wrinkle in the Vilification of Mississippi,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, September 27, 1955, 6.

  74. Betty Pearson, author interview, Sumner, Miss., February 6, 2006.

  75. Pearson, author interview.

  76. Street, “Emmett Till Case,” 10.

  77. Holmes, “Way of Life Going on Trial,” 6; “Defendants Refuse to Pose,” 8A.

  78. Sam Johnson, “Jury Selection Starts Climax on Noted Case,” Jackson Daily News, September 18, 1955, 4. This may have been county attorney and prosecution member Hamilton Caldwell, who admitted several years later that he had harbored similar concerns.

  79. Ray Brennan, “2 on Trial in Till Slaying; Defense Questions Body Identity,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 18, 1955, 3.

  80. Murray Kempton, “Preacher, Preacher,” New York Post, September 19, 1955, 3; Paul Holmes, “Uncle Tells How 3 Kidnapers Invaded Home and Seized Till,” Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1955, part 1, 2.

  81. Arthur Everett, “Till Nearly Missed His Fatal Journey to Land of Cotton,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 19, 1955, 1, 12; Holmes, “Uncle Tells How 3 Kidnapers,” 2; Kempton, “Preacher, Preacher,” 3, 30; John N. Popham, “Slain Boy’s Uncle Ready to Testify,” New York Times, September 19, 1955, 50; “Slain Boy’s Uncle Recalls Fatal Night,” Chicago American, September 19, 1955, 4; Ray Brennan, “Till’s Uncle Sticks to Guns, Says He’ll Relate Kidnaping,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 19, 1955, 3.

  82. Everett, “Till Nearly Missed His Fatal Journey,” 1, 12; Holmes, “Uncle Tells How 3 Kidnapers,” 2; Kempton, “Preacher, Preacher,” 3, 30. Simeon Wright, Mose Wright’s son, said that he and his brothers slept at home each night after the kidnapping (Wheeler Parker Jr., Crosby Smith Jr., and Simeon Wright, author interview, February 7, 2007, Argo, Ill., comments by Wright). However, because his father’s story is contemporary to the event, and Simeon’s memory is over fifty years old, I accept Mose Wright’s account as the most accurate. In a later interview, Mose Wright said that his sons stayed with his brother, Will Wright (Moses Wright, “I Saw Them Take Emmett Till,” Front Page Detective, February 1956, 29).

  83. Brennan, “Till’s Uncle Sticks to Guns,” 3; Holmes, “Uncle Tells How 3 Kidnapers,” 2; Everett, “Till Nearly Missed His Fatal Journey,” 12.

  84. Holmes, “Uncle Tells How 3 Kidnapers,” 2; Everett, “Till Nearly Missed His Fatal Journey,” 12; Kempton, “Preacher, Preacher,” 30.

  85. Brennan, “Till’s Uncle Sticks to Guns,” 3. Sidney Carlton had told reporter Paul Holmes a day earlier that he had evidence that Till had “made an indecent proposal” to Carolyn Bryant, which still went beyond the wolf whistle, but this may have been in line with early reports that Till had made “ugly remarks” to Bryant. If Carlton said anything to Holmes about Till attempting to “maul” Bryant, as Brennan relates, Holmes did not report it. See Holmes, “Way of Life Going on Trial,” 6.

  86. Everett, “Till Nearly Missed His Fatal Journey,” 12.

  87. Jay Milner, “Negro’s Funeral at Sumner Takes Spotlight from Trial,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 19, 1955, 1; James L. Hicks, “Lynch Trial Begins; Mother Arrives with Her Pastor,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 24, 1955, 2.

  88. Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 156–57. Hicks’s investigative articles ran in the Baltimore Afro-American, the Cleveland Call and Post, and the Atlanta Daily World. Metress uses the Call and Post articles as his basis, and includes omitted portions that appear in the other two publications in brackets. All three were prominent black newspapers. For convenience, I cite Metress’s synthesis rather than the original sources. For Metress’s explanation of his editorial method, see Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 154; Hicks, “Lynch Trial Begins,” 2.

  89. Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 156.

  90. Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 159–61.

  91. Clark Porteous, “Officers Work All Night on Searches,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 21, 1955, 1, 7; T. R. M. Howard, “Terror Reigns in Mississippi,” speech delivered October 2, 1955, Baltimore, Washington Afro-American, October 1, 1955, 19, and Baltimore Afro-American, October 8, 1955, 6, reprinted in Houck and Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 125–27; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 120–21.

  92. Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 162.

  93. “Bryant’s Store in Money Robbed Sat. Night; Boys Fired Guns,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, September 20, 1955, 1; “Recover Merchandise Believed Stolen from Bryant Store at Money,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, September 22, 1955, 1. The latter story says the robbery occurred on Sunday, not Saturday.

  94. “1500 Hear Till’s Kin Speak at Rally,” Chicago Defender, September 24, 1955, 3.

  95. Marty Richardson, “Clevelanders Rally Behind Mother of Lynching Victim,” Cleveland Call and Post, September 24, 1955, 1A, 5A.

  Chapter 5

  1. Clark Porteous, “Jury Being Chosen in Till Trial,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 19, 1955, 4; Arthur Everett, “Till Nearly Missed His Fatal Journey to the Land of Cotton,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 19, 1955, 12. In 1979, J. W. Kellum said that the courthouse was built in 1903 and burned in 1909. See J. W. Kellum and Amzie Moore, interview, conducted by Blackside, Inc., August 29, 1979, for Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/.

  2. William Street, “Emmett Till Case Suddenly Thrusts Little Sumner into Limelight,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 18, 1955, 10.

  3. James Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed as Murder Trial Opens; Evidence ‘Circumstantial,’” Jackson Daily News, September 19, 1955, 14.

  4. Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed,” 14; Street, “Emmett Till Case Suddenly Thrusts Little Sumner,” 10. According to Clark Porteous, Sumner adopted its town slogan after a restaurant owner there complained about lackluster business but noted, “it’s a good place to raise a boy” (Clark Porteous, “Proud, with Reason at Sumner,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 21, 1955, 2).

  5. Harry Marsh, “Hundred Newsmen Jam Scene of Till Trial,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 19, 1955, 1; Harry Marsh, “Communist Writer at Trial Lauds Citizens,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 23, 1955, 1; B. J. Skelton, “Testimony at Bryant-Milam Trial Has Left Many Questions Unanswered,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 23, 1955, 7.

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sp; 6. Jay Milner, “Bryant Didn’t Mind His Negro Non-Com during Korean War,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 20, 1955, 12.

  7. L. Alex Wilson, “Picking of Jury Delays Opening,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), September 24, 1955, 1. Davis Houck and Matthew Grindy say that, initially, Strider was not even going to allow the black press inside the courtroom, but after arguing the issue with Judge Swango, he relented (Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008], 73). They do not cite a source for this claim, but it was also made by David Halberstam in 1993. Halberstam cites a statement purportedly made by John Popham of the New York Times: “‘There ain’t going to be any nigger reporters in my courtroom,’ he [Strider] told Popham in their first struggle over media privileges. ‘Talk to Judge Swango,’ Popham answered. Strider did and only reluctantly allowed the blacks to be seated” (David Halberstam, The Fifties [New York: Villard Books, 1993], 439). Halberstam does not identify the source for his anecdote, but in surrounding notes he cites interviews he conducted with other journalists who attended the trial, such as Jay Milner, Murray Kempton, and Bill Minor. It is possible that the comments purportedly made by Popham come from late reminiscences of one of these reporters. In Popham’s coverage of the trial, he notes that the white and black journalists were segregated but says nothing about an attempt by Strider to keep black reporters from attending the trial (John N. Popham, “Trial Under Way in Youth’s Killing,” New York Times, September 20, 1955, 32). It is clear that the black press table had already been set up before the Monday morning briefing. James Hicks arrived in Sumner the Friday before the trial and reported that Strider had already ruled that black reporters would be sitting in a segregated area of the courtroom (James L. Hicks, “Reporters Segregated,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 24, 1955, 1). Strider would have no more to say about the subject before Monday because he went to Atlanta on the weekend to attend a football game. See Sam Johnson, “Jury Selection Starts Climax on Noted Case,” Jackson Daily News, September 18, 1955, 4.

  8. Paul Holmes, “A Way of Life Going on Trial in Till Case,” Chicago Tribune, September 18, 1955, 6; Murray Kempton, “Heart of Darkness,” New York Post, September 21, 1955, 50; Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006), 96–97.

  9. James L. Kilgallen, “Spectators in Dixie Court Searched for Weapons,” Chicago American, September 19, 1955, 1; John Herbers, “Till Trial Bogs Down in Jury-Picking Job,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 19, 1955, 1; Milner, “Bryant Didn’t Mind,” 12; Rob F. Hall, “Kidnapers’ Friends Fill Panel as Trial Opens in Mississippi in Child’s Murder,” Daily Worker (New York), September 20, 1955, 1; Paul Holmes, “2 Go on Trial in South for Till Murder,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 20, 1955, 2. For more on the Capitol shootings, see Clayton Knowles, “Five Congressmen Shot in House by 3 Puerto Rican Nationalists,” New York Times, March 2, 1954, 1; Irene Vilar, A Message from God in the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1996). The shooters were later tried and convicted in federal court but pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and 1979.

  10. “Newsmen and Photographers Are Frisked for Weapons,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 20, 1955, 17.

  11. Popham, “Trial Under Way,” 32; “Newsman and Photographers Are Frisked,” 17.

  12. Milner, “Bryant Didn’t Mind,” 12; Clark Porteous, “Big Names in Nation’s Press Are at Trial,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 20, 1955, 1, 2; “8-Man Team Covers Till Case Trial,” Chicago Defender, September 24, 1955, 5; “Here’s Cast for Sumner, Miss. Trial,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), September 24, 1955, 1, 2; Roberts and Klibanoff, Race Beat, 90–94; David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 121; Gene Herrick, author telephone interview, January 27, 2012. For an analysis of how the Communist paper handled the case, including the trial, see Matthew A. Grindy, “Mississippi Terror, Red Pressure: The Daily Worker’s Coverage of the Emmett Till Murder,” Controversia: An International Journal of Debate and Democratic Renewal 6, no. 1 (2008): 39–66.

  13. Roberts and Klibanoff, Race Beat, 90–94; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 121; Milner, “Bryant Didn’t Mind,” 12; Ralph Hutto, “Dynamic Personalities Form Till Trial Cast,” Jackson State Times, September 20, 1955, 2A; “70 Newsmen Cover Trial in Sumner,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 20, 1955, 1; “Newsmen and Photographers Are Frisked,” 17; “Daily Worker’s Reporter at Trial Is Mississippian,” Jackson Daily News, September 20, 1955, 6; Marsh, “Communist Writer at Trial,” 1; W. C. Shoemaker, “Reporter for Commies Relates How He Shifted to ‘Left’—Says Trial ‘Fair,’” Jackson Daily News, September 21, 1955, 14.

  14. Halberstam, The Fifties, 436–37.

  15. See, for example, Warren Breed, “Comparative Newspaper Handling of the Emmett Till Case,” Journalism Quarterly 35 (Summer 1958): 291–98; Charles Ealy, “The Emmett Till Case: A Comparative Analysis of Newspaper Coverage” (Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Dallas, 1996); John R. Tisdale, “Different Assignments, Different Perspectives: How Reporters Reconstruct the Emmett Till Civil Rights Murder Trial,” Oral History Review 29, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2002): 39–58; Craig Flourney, “Reporting the Movement in Black and White: The Emmett Till Lynching and the Montgomery Bus Boycott” (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2003); Michael Olby, Black Press Coverage of the Emmett Till Lynching (Koln, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2007); Margaret Spratt et al., “News, Race, and the Status Quo: The Case of Emmett Till,” Howard Journal of Communications 18, no. 2 (2007): 169–92; Houck and Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press; Yolanda Denise Campbell, “Outsiders Within: A Framing Analysis of Eight Black and White U.S. Newspapers’ Coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1964” (PhD diss., University of Southern Mississippi, 2011); Rebecca Miller Davis, “Reporting Race and Resistance in Dixie: The White Mississippi Press and Civil Rights, 1944–1964” (PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 2011); Darryl C. Mace, In Remembrance of Emmett Till: Regional Stories and Media Responses to the Black Freedom Struggle (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014).

  16. Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed,” 14; Hutto, “Dynamic Personalities,” 2A.

  17. B. J. Skelton and Sam Johnson, “Prosecution Says Case Depends on Circumstantial Evidence,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 19, 1955, 1; William Sorrels, “10 Jurymen Are Selected for Trial of 2 White Men in Slaying of Negro Youth,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 20, 1955, 15.

  18. In her 2003 memoir, Mamie Till-Mobley said that she was at the trial on its opening day. Because nearly fifty years had elapsed between the trial and her book, either she forgot just when she went to Sumner or her coauthor, Christopher Benson, who finished the book after Mamie’s death, erroneously assumed that she was there. See Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 158–60.

  19. “Judge in Mississippi Case Has Long Service Record,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 18, 1955, 10; Ellen Whitten, “Justice Unearthed: Revisiting the Murder of Emmett Till” (Honor’s thesis, Rhodes College, 2005), 20, http://www.rhodes.edu/images/content/Academics/Ellen_Whitten.pdf.

  20. Milner, “Bryant Didn’t Mind,” 12; W. C. Shoemaker, author interview, August 21, 2009, Kosciusko, Miss.

  21. Herbers, “Till Trial Bogs Down,” 2; Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed” 1, 14; Art Everett, “10 Tentative Jurors Chosen in Till Trial; Will Not Ask Death,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 20, 1955, 12; Popham, “Trial Under Way,” 32–33; “Judge Limits Sketching of Murder Trial,” Jackson State Times, September 20, 1955, 2A; Harry Marsh, “Unanswered Questions Nag Newsmen at Trial,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 20, 1955, 2.

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bsp; 22. Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed,” 14.

  23. Sam Johnson, “State Will Not Ask Death Penalty in Trial of White Men at Sumner,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, September 19, 1955, 1; Holmes, “2 Go on Trial,” 2.

  24. Marsh, “Unanswered Questions,” 2.

  25. James Kilgallen, “Expect Trial to Be Short, Tense,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), September 24, 1955, 2.

  26. Sorrels, “10 Jurymen Are Selected,” 1.

  27. Herbers, “Till Trial Bogs Down,” 1.

  28. Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed,” 1.

  29. Skelton and Johnson, “Prosecution Says Case,” 1; Popham, “Trial Under Way,” 32; Porteous, “Jury Being Chosen,” 1, 4; James L. Kilgallen, “Jury to Go Out as State Rests Case,” Chicago American, September 23, 1955, 1.

  30. Ralph Hutto, “Sheriff Won’t Call Guard to Preserve Order,” Jackson State Times, September 21, 1955, 8A; Clark Porteous, “New Angle in Till Case Claimed,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 20, 1955, 5.

  31. “‘Money Jars’ for Defense Delay Trial,” Jackson State Times, September 20, 1955, 2A; Hutto, “Sheriff Won’t Call Guard,” 8A; Herbers, “Till Trial Bogs Down,” 1.

  32. Rob Hall, “Sumner, a Good Place to Raise a Boy,” Daily Worker (New York), September 21, 1955, 8.

  33. Porteous, “New Angle in Till Case,” 5.

  34. “‘Money Jars’ for Defense,” 2A.

  35. Everett, “10 Tentative Jurors Chosen,” 1, 12; Milner, “Bryant Didn’t Mind,” 1, 12; Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed,” 14; Murray Kempton, “The Baby Sitter,” New York Post, September 20, 1955, 5; John Herbers, “Testimony Opens Today in Till ‘Wolf-Whistle’ Murder Trial,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 20, 1955, 2.

  36. Featherston, “Delta Courtroom Is Packed,” 1.

  37. Ralph Hutto, “Defense Sees Longer Trial Than Expected,” Jackson State Times, September 19, 1955, 1.