Emmett Till
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70. Trial Transcript, 285–87.
71. Trial Transcript, 287–89.
72. Trial Transcript, 290.
73. Trial Transcript, 290–91.
74. Trial Transcript, 291–93.
75. Trial Transcript, 293–94.
76. Trial Transcript, 298.
77. Trial Transcript, 298–300.
78. Trial Transcript, 300–301.
79. Trial Transcript, 301–4.
80. Trial Transcript, 304–5.
81. Trial Transcript, 305–6. Years later John Whitten reflected back on Otken’s testimony. “He testified [that] the body . . . pulled from the river had been in the river at least two weeks, and this Till boy had been in the river just three or four days. It could have been anybody. That’s what made me question, not whether the crime had been committed, but whether they had the right corpse. He was a well-respected doctor” (Ellen Whitten, “Justice Unearthed: Revisiting the Murder of Emmett Till” [Honor’s thesis, Rhodes College, 2005], 21, http://www.rhodes.edu/images/content/Academics/Ellen_Whitten.pdf).
82. Trial Transcript, 306–8.
83. Trial Transcript, 309–11. In recent years there has been some question about who actually embalmed Emmett Till. Malone was called to testify about the condition of the body because, as the embalmer, he was familiar with it. When graduate student Hugh Stephen Whitaker conducted research in 1962 for his master’s thesis on the case, he interviewed Malone, who described the unique embalming process that he was forced to use because heavy decomposition had made the intravenous process impossible. See 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.
In a study published in 2003 that touches briefly on the Till case, Paul Hendrickson of the Washington Post interviewed a man named Woodrow Jackson who claimed that he was the one who embalmed Till. He also said that he was the attendant who drove to Greenwood to pick up the body from the Century Burial Association and took it to the Tutwiler funeral home where the embalming took place. “Oh, Lord, look what I got here,” he said after he first saw the battered corpse. He then worked on it from four o’clock that afternoon until five the following morning, taking “a few drinks” to make the process more bearable. He then put the body into a wooden casket and drove it to Clarksdale, where it was loaded onto a train bound for Chicago (Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi [New York: Knopf, 2003], 310–11). A marker placed in front of the now-abandoned funeral home in Tutwiler also credits Jackson with the embalming. Others, such as filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, also interviewed Jackson, and Jackson held to this story. Jackson may have indeed been the attendant who retrieved the body, and then assisted Malone from there. However, in his closing remarks to the jury, Robert Smith said that Malone was not competent enough to determine just how long the body had been in the river. As paraphrased in a report by the Chicago Defender, “Malone is supervising two funeral homes, a colored and white one.” “A Negro is during [doing] his job,” said Smith, and urged “that Malone should be fired” (“Sidelights of Till Trial,” Tri-State Defender [Memphis, Tenn.], October 1, 1955, 5). If Smith had gleaned some knowledge about the funeral home, this may mean that Malone simply oversaw the embalming and that perhaps Jackson did the actual physical work. Jackson died in 2007; Malone died fourteen years earlier in 1993, and thus any verification of the specific role of each is now impossible.
84. Trial Transcript, 310–14.
85. Trial Transcript, 315–19.
86. Trial Transcript, 319–21.
87. Trial Transcript, 322–23.
88. L. Alex Wilson, “Reveals Two Key Witnesses Jailed,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), October 1, 1955, 2.
89. Wilson, “Reveals Two Key Witnesses,” 2.
90. Wilson, “Reveals Two Key Witnesses,” 2.
91. Wilson, “Reveals Two Key Witnesses,” 2; Murray Kempton, “They Didn’t Forget,” New York Post, September 26, 1955, 22.
92. James Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom Kept Eyes on Juryroom Door,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 24, 1955, 4.
93. Trial Transcript, 325–27.
94. Trial Transcript, 327; Murray Kempton, “2 Face Trial as ‘Whistle’ Kidnapers—Due to Post Bond and Go Home,” New York Post, September 25, 1955, 16.
95. Trial Transcript, 327–28.
96. Trial Transcript, 328–29.
97. Trial Transcript, 329–30.
98. Trial Transcript, 330–33.
99. Trial Transcript, 333–36.
100. Trial Transcript, 336–38.
101. Trial Transcript, 340–43.
102. Trial Transcript, 343–46.
103. Trial Transcript, 347–49.
104. Trial Transcript, 350–51.
105. Trial Transcript, 351; John Herbers, “Wolf Whistle Murder Case Goes to Jury in Sumner Circuit Court,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 23, 1955, 7.
106. “Called Lynch-Murder, ‘Morally, Legally’ Wrong,” Cleveland Call and Post, October 1, 1955, 10C; Jay Milner, “Defendants Turned Back to Face Kidnap Charges by Leflore County Jury,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 25, 1955, 8; James Featherston and W. C. Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction; Defense Says No Proof Presented, Asks Acquittal,” Jackson Daily News, September 23, 1955, 1; W. F. Minor, “Two Not Guilty of Till Murder, Jury Declares,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, September 24, 1955, 5; Kempton, “2 Face Trial, 16; Herbers, “Wolf Whistle Murder Case Goes to Jury,” 1; Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 101–2, 110.
107. Featherston and Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction,” 1; William Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted in Slaying of Chicago Negro; Jurors Out Only 67 Minutes,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 24, 1955, 1; Everett, “Trial in Leflore,” 8; “Jury Acquits Bryant, Milam of Murder Charge as Trial Ends,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 23, 1955, 3.
108. Everett, “Trial in Leflore Must Wait Action,” 8; Featherston and Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction,” 1; “Called Lynch-Murder,” 10C; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 104; “Jury Acquits Bryant, Milam,” 3.
109. “Called Lynch-Murder,” 10C; Minor, “Two Not Guilty” 5; Kempton, “2 Face Trial as ‘Whistle’ Kidnapers,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 102–3, 110. Chatham’s son, Gerald Chatham Sr., later recalled memories of his dog, Shep, in interviews he gave over fifty years after his father told this story in court. Chatham says his father exaggerated the story, but that it was the type of anecdote, complete with embellishments, that good attorneys use in court. Shep, a large black and white woolly dog, had been hit by a car on the highway near the Chatham home. Young Gerald learned of the incident, went to the road, carried him home, and buried him. Rather than being dead for some time and decomposing, the pet had actually just died and was easily recognizable. See Gerald Chatham Sr., Oral History Interview (OH293), January 19, 2005, Charles W. Capps Jr. Archives and Museum, Delta State University, Cleveland, Miss.; Gerald Chatham Sr., author interview, February 24, 2012, Hernando, Miss.
110. Shoemaker and Featherston, “State Demands Conviction,” 1; Everett, “Trial in Leflore Must Await Action,” 8; “Called Lynch-Murder,” 10C; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 2; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 102, 109.
111. “Called Lynch-Murder,” 10C; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 103; “Sidelights of Till Trial,” 5.
112. “Called Lynch-Murder,” 10C; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 104.
113. Gunter, “Milling Throng,” 4; “Called Lynch-Murder,” 10C; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 101–4.
114. Featherston and Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction,” 1, 9.
115. Everett, “Trial in Leflore,” 8.
1
16. Everett, “Trial in Leflore,” 8.
117. Everett, “Trial in Leflore,” 8; Featherston and Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction,” 1; “Jury Acquits Bryant, Milam,” 3; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 2.
118. Featherston and Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction,” 9.
119. Featherston and Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction,” 9; Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 110.
120. Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 110; “Defense Lawyer Quotes Dickens in Final Plea,” Jackson State Times, September 23, 1955, 1.
121. Featherston and Shoemaker, “State Demands Conviction,” 9.
122. Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 110; Everett, “Trial in Leflore,” 8.
123. Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 110–11. Kempton said, in reference to the above quote, that Kellum had taken it from Paul Johnson, three-time candidate for governor in Mississippi (he would finally win in 1963). Johnson himself had apparently created this quote by blending the words of William Cullen Bryant, a nineteenth-century editor of the New York Evening Post, and Robert Ingersoll, former Illinois politician and great defender of agnosticism.
124. Milner, “Defendants Turned Back,” 1.
125. Milner, “Defendants Turned Back,” 1.
126. Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 1, 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 108; Wakefield, “Justice in Sumner,” 285.
127. David Beito statement in Beauchamp, Untold Story, rough-cut version in author’s possession.
128. Wakefield, “Justice in Sumner,” 285; Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 108.
129. Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 111.
130. Milner, “Defendants Turned Back,” 8; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 2.
131. Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 109; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 2.
132. Trial Transcript, 351; Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 1.
133. Clark Porteus, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 24, 1955, 3; Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 16.
134. James Hicks, “Big Town,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 8, 1955, 9.
135. Edward Murrain, “Till’s Mom, Mayor Get Bomb Threats,” New York Age Defender, October 1, 1955, 2; Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 1.
136. Mattie Smith Colin, “Till’s Mom, Diggs Both Disappointed,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), October 1, 1955, 2; Mamie Till-Mobley, author telephone interview, December 3, 1996.
137. Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 1; Clark Porteous, “Next: Two Face Till Kidnap Charges,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 24, 1955, 1, 3.
138. Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 4; Wakefield, “Justice at Sumner,” 285; Herrick, author telephone interview, January 27, 2012.
139. Kempton, “2 Face Trial,” 3; Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 1; Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3.
140. Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 1. The trial transcript says the deliberation took one hour and eight minutes, as does reporter Clark Porteous (Trial Transcript, 352; Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3). Bill Minor said he timed it at one hour and five minutes (Minor, “Two Not Guilty,” 1; Wilson F. Minor, author interview, August 24, 2009, Jackson, Miss.). Most accounts put it at one hour and seven minutes.
141. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3.
142. Trial Transcript, 352; Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3.
143. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 1; Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 4; James Kilgallen, “Defendants Receive Handshakes, Kisses,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 24, 1955, 3.
144. Trial Transcript, 352; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 1; Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3; Kilgallen, “Defendants Receive Handshakes,” 3.
145. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3; Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 1.
146. Trial Transcript, 352–53; Gunter, “Milling Throng in Courtroom,” 1; Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Kidnap Charges,” 3.
147. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3.
148. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 1.
149. Kilgallen, “Defendants Receive Handshakes,” 3; Milner, “Defendants Turned Back,” 8; Paul Holmes, “Jury Reaches Verdict after Hour Debate,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 24, 1955, 2.
150. Porteous, “Next: 2 Two Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3; Sorrels, “Two Mississippians Acquitted,” 2; Minor, “Two Not Guilty,” 5. Hugh Stephen Whitaker, who interviewed the jurors in 1962, said one of them told him that all three ballots were unanimous for a “not guilty” verdict (Whitaker, “Case Study in Southern Justice,” 154, reprint, 210). In 2005, Whitaker noted that “in retrospect, if the ballots had been unanimous, there should not have been three votes.” He was later told by a son of one of the jurors “that three of the jurors voted ‘guilty’ on the first ballot. Two quickly changed their votes, but one held out for a while, until the others wore him down” (Hugh Stephen Whitaker, email to author, June 22, 2005). While this is certainly a possibility, it is also likely that the son simply assumed the jurors who abstained from voting on the first two ballots actually voted “guilty.” Unfortunately, we will never know for sure.
151. Charles Gruenberg, “Jury Tells Why It Acquitted—‘Shocking,’ Says NAACP,” New York Post, September 25, 1955, 3.
152. Gruenberg, “Jury Tells Why It Acquitted,” 3.
153. Gruenberg, “Jury Tells Why It Acquitted,” 3.
154. “Trial by Jury,” Time 66, no. 14 (October 3, 1955): 19.
155. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3; Minor, “Two Not Guilty,” 1, 5.
156. Ralph Hutto, “Now Sumner Is Just Another Sleepy Delta Town,” Jackson State Times, September 24, 1955, 1.
157. Hutto, “Now Sumner Is Just Another Sleepy Delta Town,” 1; Holmes, “Jury Reaches Verdict,” 2.
158. “Mamie Bradley Says She Expected Verdict,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 25, 1955, 1; Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3.
159. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3.
160. Gruenberg, “Jury Tells Why It Acquitted,” 3.
161. Gruenberg, “Jury Tells Why It Acquitted,” 3.
162. “Till Case Still Troubles Mississippi,” Chicago American, September 26, 1955, 4.
163. Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 129.
164. “Dr. Howard: Situation in Mississippi Extremely Serious,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 8, 1955, 1, 4.
165. Hugh White to Armis Hawkins, September 14, 1955, James P. Coleman Papers, Accn. Z1877, box 23, fd. 3, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Archives and Library Division, Special Collections Section, Manuscript Collection, Jackson.
166. Minor, “Two Not Guilty,” 5; Bill Minor, Eyes on Mississippi: A Fifty-Year Chronicle of Change (Jackson, Miss.: J Prichard Morris Books, 2001), 195.
167. “Dr. Howard: Situation,” 1, 4; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 129.
168. “Till Case Still Troubles Mississippi,” 4.
169. R. R. Shurden to J. Edgar Hoover, September 5, 1955; Office memorandum from Mr. Parsons to Mr. Tolson, September 9, 1955; Report of the FBI laboratory to Mr. R. R. Shurden, Chief of Police, Greenwood, Mississippi, September 14, 1955, all in FBI FOIA release to Devery S. Anderson, 2006, re Emmett Till.
170. Jay Milner, “Newsmen Disagree on Protest Rallies,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 27, 1955, 1.
171. “Situation in Mississippi,” 2.
172. Whitaker, “Case Study in Southern Justice,” 152, r
eprint, 209.
173. “Situation in Mississippi,” 4; “Cong. Diggs, ‘Emmett Till Trial Over, but Negroes Should Never Forget Its Meaning,’” Pittsburgh Courier, October 8, 1955, 4.
174. Whitaker, “Case Study in Southern Justice,” 147–48, reprint, 207–8.
175. Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 129.
176. C. Sidney Carlton, “Defense Says Till Verdict Was Justice,” Chicago Defender, October 1, 1955. Carlton was clearly speaking as an attorney vested in the case. He says that “the defendants were only questionably placed at Mose Wright’s house,” an obvious reference to Wright’s testimony, which Carlton tried to rebut, but he ignores the testimonies of Sheriff George Smith and Deputy John Cothran, who both testified to receiving kidnap admissions from Milam and Bryant, and Roy Bryant himself, who admitted to the attorneys after his arrest that he was not only at the Wright home but identified himself by name. Carlton also insists that “the only expert and scientific testimony conclusively showed that the body taken from the river had been dead a minimum of eight to 10 days, while Till was missing only three days before that time.” Yet under cross-examination, these witnesses admitted that an overweight body, or one that had been severely beaten, could decompose faster.
177. This insight as to ethics was given to me on July 20, 2011, in an interview with John A. Hays, a defense attorney residing in Longview, Washington.
178. Whitaker, “Case Study in Southern Justice,” 147, 155, reprint, 207, 210–11.
179. Tom Brennan, “Emmett Till: More Than a Murder,” Jackson Clarion–Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 2H.
180. Murrain, “Till’s Mom, Mayor,” 2.
181. Ted Poston, “Mose Wright Left Everything to Flee for Life,” New York Post, October 3, 1955, 28; Lee Blackwell, “2 Who Fled Mississippi Tell Stories,” Chicago Defender, October 1, 1955, 2.
182. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 3; Blackwell, “2 Who Fled Mississippi,” 2.
183. Porteous, “Next: 2 Face Till Kidnap Charges,” 1; Wheeler Parker Jr., Crosby Smith Jr., and Simeon Wright, author interview, February 7, 2007, Argo, Ill., comments by Wright; Paul Burton, “‘Old Man Mose’ Sells Out, He’ll Move to New York,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 26, 1955, 1; Simeon Wright, with Herb Boyd, Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), 82; “Moses Wright Turns Down Island Job,” New York Amsterdam News, October 8, 1955, 23.