35. “Jury Refuses to Indict Emmett Till Kidnapers,” Daily Worker (New York), November 10, 1955, 1.
36. John Herbers, “‘Case Closed’ as Jury Fails to Indict Pair for Till Kidnaping,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 10, 1955, 1.
37. Minter Krotzer, emails to author, May 17, May 19, and June 7, 2010. Somerville died in 1976 when Krotzer was only twelve. Krotzer recalled hearing, when she was young, that her grandfather had voted for an indictment, but was not positive. During our correspondence, she confirmed through a family member that this was true.
38. Mary Lou Ray, author telephone interview, August 6, 2013. Ray is a cousin of June Broadway. Although Ray did not know Broadway personally, over the years she has known and spoken with several family members who did.
39. Herbers, “Case Closed,” 1; “NAACP Asks Who Did It,” 4.
40. Harry Marsh, “Sheriff Says He Got Little Cooperation,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 10, 1955, 1; “Comment Continues on Till Case; Witnesses Blamed,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 11, 1955, 1.
41. “Grand Jury Ignores Confession; Prefers to Query Witnesses,” Jet 8, no. 29 (November 24, 1955): 6–7.
42. “End of Kidnaping Case Where Leflore Concerned,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, November 10, 1955, 1; “No Kidnap Trial for Milam, Bryant,” Chicago Defender, November 19, 1955, 1, 2.
43. “Grand Jury Frees Accused Kidnappers,” Abilene (Tex.) Reporter, November 10, 1955, 9; “Darkness in Mississippi,” Chicago Daily Sun-Times, November 11, 1955, 37.
44. As quoted in Herbers, “Case Closed,” 1; Jerome Bernstein, “There Is No Justice in Mississippi,” Florida Flambeau (Tallahassee), November 15, 1955, 2; Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 145.
45. Dr. T. D. Patton to John Whitten, September 28, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
46. Russel D. Moore III to Jesse Breland, October 5, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a. Moore was the father-in-law of Bobby DeLaughter, Hines County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith in 1994 for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. Beckwith was found guilty in this, his third trial.
47. J. J. Breland to Russel D. Moore III, October 6, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
48. Two writers who have examined the case note the possibility that Sheriff Smith may not have been as forthcoming in his grand jury testimony as he was in Sumner regarding the kidnap confession he received from Roy Bryant. They see his sudden belief in a conspiracy among the witnesses to free Milam and Bryant and thus embarrass Mississippi as evidence of his insincerity. “Given that grand jury statements would remain secret, we can only surmise that some things had changed since his testimony of September 22” (Houck and Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press, 144).
49. Reed, author interview.
50. “Four Witnesses Called in Probe,” 2.
51. “Willie Reed Gets $1,000 Elk Grant,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 4.
52. “Huff Quits Mrs. Bradley, NAACP Cancels Tour,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 1, 2.
53. “Says Till Funds Given to Kin,” Chicago Defender, November 26, 1955, 36.
54. Mamie Bradley to Roy Wilkins, November 9, 1955, printed in James L. Hicks, “Why Emmett Till’s Mother and NAACP Couldn’t Agree,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 31, 1955, 2.
55. Wilkins to Bradley, November 15, 1955. Mamie’s later recollections over this incident are clearly incorrect. She said in 1988 that the need for more money was not only to pay her father $100 per week but also to help pay his expenses, including airfare. However, she blamed Anna Crockett for insisting on the $5,000 fee. According to Mamie, Crockett said that this figure was necessary in order to pay a salary to Crockett also and for the upkeep of Mamie’s home while she was gone. Mamie held to Crockett’s 1955 story from the Chicago Defender that one of the NAACP leaders out west, which was certainly a reference to Franklin Williams, “was in total agreement that $5,000 was little enough to ask.” She said she settled for $3,500 after talking with Wilkins but that Wilkins inexplicably “just put his foot down,” ended their relationship, and accused her “of capitalizing on my son’s death” (Mamie Till-Mobley and Gene Mobley, interview, in Clenora Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement, 4th ed. [Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2006], 147–48).
In her 2003 memoir, Till-Mobley said that a West Coast leader, a minister (this would have been Sylvester Odum), was able to secure $3,000 and even said he would try to double that, but that Wilkins called her late that night and “bawled me out” (Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 206–7). From the many letters and telegrams between Wilkins and other NAACP leaders, Wilkins’s recorded phone call with Tobias, and Wilkins’s detailed letter to Mamie, it is clear that Mamie’s memory is inaccurate on almost all of the details. Neither Wilkins nor Williams offered a compromise to the previously agreed upon honorarium of $1,100, and the NAACP, contrary to what Mamie thought she remembered later, had already agreed to pay her father’s airfare. Mamie’s air force salary was $3,900 per year. Any monies required for providing a salary for Mamie, her father, and Crockett for only a two-week period, in addition to funds covering her household bills, would hardly total $5,000, the equivalent of $40,000 today.
56. Some authors, having failed to research the entire story of the Mamie Bradley–Roy Wilkins conflict, have made erroneous conclusions about the event. 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), 282–87; 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 2006): 266.
57. Evers-Williams, author telephone interview.
58. “Mother of Till Raising Money,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, November 15, 1955, 7.
59. “Stratton Asks Federal Probe in Till Slaying,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 11, 1955, part 1, 2; “Brownell Rejects Request for Action in Emmett Till Case,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, December 6, 1955, 7; Jonathan L. Entin, “Emmett Till and Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights,” paper presented at Stillman College, Tuscaloosa, Ala., September 16, 2005, copy in author’s possession. The only other provision that would have allowed for federal intervention was Title 18, USC, section 241, which forbade conspiracies to violate federal rights. In 1955, this part of the civil rights statue was not clear, and, according to Entin, “even an administration that was strongly committed to protecting African Americans might have concluded that prosecuting Emmett Till’s killers would face substantial legal hurdles.”
60. “Government Official Labels Till Case ‘Black Mark,’” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, November 21, 1955, 1.
61. James L. Hicks, open letter to US Attorney General Herbert Brownell and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, in “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” Washington Afro-American, November 19, 1955, 4, 14, reprinted in Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 194–99.
62. Office memorandum from F. L. Price to Mr. [Alex] Rosen, February 29, 1956, FBI file on Emmett Till.
63. Roy Wilkins to B. T. George, December 2, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 15.
64. L. Alex Wilson, “Gus Courts, Miss. NAACP Head Tells How He Was Shot Down,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), December 3, 1955, 1, 2; “Leader Left State after Being Shot,” Baltimore Afro-American, November 10, 1956, 8. Courts spent twenty-one days in the hospital and then moved to Chicago, where he began working for the NAACP.
65. Milton S. Katz, “E. Frederick Morrow and Civil Rights in the Eisenhower Administration,” Phylon 42, no. 2 (2nd Quarter 1981): 133–34.
66. Memorandum of E. Frederick Morrow to Maxell Rabb, November 29, 1955, Eisenhower Library, online documents, www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents.html.
67. Morrow to Rabb, November 29, 1955; see also Nichols, Matter of Justice, 117.
68. “Dr. T. R. M. Howard to Address Ala. Omegas,” Birmingham (Ala.) World, November 18, 1955, 1; “Famed Dr. Howard, Rights Fighter, Montgomery Speaker,” Birmingham (Ala.) World, November 22, 1955, 1, and Alabama Tribune (Montgomery), November 25, 1955, 1. Two of the articles announced that the meeting would be at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, but a caption under Howard’s photo still had it scheduled at Tillibody Auditorium.
69. Emory O. Jackson, “Howard Thinking About ‘March on Washington,’” Birmingham (Ala.) World, December 6, 1955, 6.
70. Jackson, “Howard Thinking,” 6; 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), 138.
71. Rosa Parks interview, conducted by Blackside, Inc., November 14, 1985, for Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/.
72. Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013), 61–65; Rosa Parks, with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992), 113–17; Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks (New York: Penguin, 2000), 103–8; Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking Books, 1987), 66.
73. Theoharis, Rebellious Life, 72–115; Parks and Haskins, Rosa Parks, 125–60; Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 119–73; Williams, Eyes on the Prize, 60–89. For detailed studies of the boycott, see Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper, 1958); Donnie Williams, with Wayne Greenhaw, The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2006).
74. “Mamie Till-Mobley, Civil Rights Heroine, Eulogized in Chicago,” Jet 103, no. 5 (January 27, 2003): 18.
75. Don Babwin, “Civil Rights Advocates Seek Historical Status for Church,” Charleston (W.Va.) Sunday Gazette-Mail, November 20, 2005, 5A. Jackson had told this story a month earlier at Parks’s funeral. In the years since, the quote, although only a secondhand statement, has been assumed to be authoritative and was placed on a marker in front of the Bryant store in Money, Mississippi, in May 2011. Mississippi state senator David Jordan recently wrote of his own encounter with Parks, which backs up the Jackson story. “I remember engaging in a conversation with Rosa Parks and hearing from her own mouth that the death of Emmett Till is what triggered her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man. It sent a chill down my spine to be engaged in a conversation with someone so resolute, whose strong belief in a cause made her a national heroine” (David L. Jordan, with Robert L. Jenkins, David L. Jordan: From the Mississippi Cotton Fields to the State Senate, A Memoir [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014], 18).
Chapter 9
1. One study of ten national publications demonstrated that they paid little attention to the case to begin with, running few stories between the murder and trial verdict. Brian Thornton examined coverage of ten magazines throughout the twelve months spanning August 28, 1955, until August 28, 1956. In general, he found coverage lacking, leading him to conclude that “despite current claims and memories that an outraged nation demanded justice for [Till] in 1955, these national magazines reveal a different reality.” Thornton does not consider the role of daily or weekly newspapers that made the story international news, or the protest rallies that lasted for months after the trial. In addition, he overlooked an article in the black magazine Ebony, a publication that he said reported nothing on Emmett Till over the course of that year. See Clotye Murdock, “Land of the Till Murder,” Ebony, April 1956, 91–96. Although this story was a report on the current climate and economy in the Mississippi Delta, it contained several photos with captions regarding the Till case. See Brian Thornton, “The Murder of Emmett Till: Myth, Memory, and National Magazine Response,” Journalism History 36, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 96–104.
2. Herbert S. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades (New York: MacMillan, 1972), 444–45. In his State of the Union speech, delivered on January 5, 1956, President Eisenhower addressed civil rights and related issues and outlined a new civil rights bill. He said in part: “The stature of our leadership in the free world has increased through the past three years because we have made more progress than ever before in a similar period to assure our citizens equality in justice, in opportunity and in civil rights. We must expand this effort on every front. We must strive to have every person judged and measured by what he is, rather than by his color, race or religion. There will soon be recommended to the Congress a program further to advance the efforts of the Government, within the area of Federal responsibility, to accomplish these objectives.” For the full speech, see “Text of President Eisenhower’s Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” New York Times, January 6, 1956, 10–11; www.pbs.org.
3. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades, 444–45.
4. “Mississippi Again,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 17, 1955, 1, 2; “Miss. Negro’s Slayer Went to Home of Till Case Figure after Shooting,” New York Post, December 9, 1955, 63; “Witnesses Say Slain Negro Didn’t Gun-Duel White Man,” Jet 9, no. 7 (December 22, 1955): 7.
5. “Use Milam Car in Miss. Slaying,” Chicago Defender, December 17, 1955, 1, 2; “Mississippi Again,” 1, 2; David Halberstam, “Tallahatchie County Acquits a Peckerwood,” Reporter 14, no. 8 (April 19, 1956): 27.
6. “Miss. Negro’s Slayer,” 3, 63.
7. “Kimbrell Is Denied Bond in Slaying at Glendora,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, December 29, 1955, 1; “Judge Denies Bond for Glendora Man,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, January 10, 1956, 1; “Miss. Negro’s Slayer,” 3. The accused killer’s last name is spelled as both “Kimbell” and “Kimbrell” in several sources.
8. “Kimbrell Is Denied Bond,” 1; “Judge Denies Bond,” 1.
9. Halberstam, “Tallahatchie County Acquits,” 27.
10. “Seek Atonement for Latest Mississippi Murder,” Chicago Defender, December 24, 1955, 3; “Witnesses Say Slain Negro,” 8.
11. Michael Vinson Williams, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2011), 128.
12. “Widow Drowns as Trial of Mate’s Slayer Opens,” Chicago Defender, March 17, 1956, 1; Moses J. Newson, “Acquit Kimbell in Miss. Trial,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 14, 1956, 1.
13. James L. Hicks, “Why Emmett Till’s Mother and NAACP Couldn’t Agree,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 31, 1955, 2; Clyde Reid, “Mamie Bradley Says NAACP Used Son,” New York Amsterdam News, December 24, 1955, 1; Roy Wilkins to Mamie Bradley, November 15, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18: Special Projects, 1940–1955, Series C: General Office Files, microfilm reel 14 (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1995); “Huff Quits Mrs. Bradley, NAACP Cancels Tour,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 1, 2.
14. Hicks, “Why Emmett Till’s Mother,” 2; Reid, “Mamie Bradley Says NAACP Used Son,” 1.
15. “Louis [sic] Till’s Mother Sets New Jersey Tour,” Washington Afro-American, January 3, 1956, 19.
16. “Brooklyn Audience Told How Till Died in Miss.,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 14, 1956, 17; “Surprise Guest Stirs NAACP Annual Meeting,” NAACP press release, January 5, 1956, Papers of Medgar Wiley Evers and Myrlie Beasley Evers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Archives and Library Division, Special Collections Section, box 2, fd. 19 (hereafter cited as Evers Papers).
17. Christopher Metress, “Truth Be Told: William Bradford Huie’s Emmett Till Cycle,” Southern Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 48.
18. See, for example, Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, January 11, 1956, 6; Chicago Daily Trib
une, January 11, 1956, 11.
19. Deirdre Coakley, “Keeper of the Flame: William Bradford Huie’s Widow, Martha Hunt Huie, Works to Get His Work Back in Print,” Gadsden (Ala.) Times, October 9, 2001, B4–B5. The Revolt of Mamie Stover, released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1956, starred Jane Russell in the title role. The Execution of Private Slovik was a 1974 made-for-TV movie featuring Martin Sheen and his young son Charlie. The others were Wild River (1960), The Outsider (1961), The Americanization of Emily (1964), and Klansman (1974).
20. David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993), 434; Bob Ward, “William Bradford Huie Paid for Their Sins,” Writer’s Digest 54, no. 9 (September 1974): 16–22.
21. William Bradford Huie, Wolf Whistle, and Other Stories (New York: New American Library, 1959), 16–17.
22. William Bradford Huie to Roy Wilkins, October 12, 1955, William Bradford Huie Papers, Cms 84, box 38, fd. 353a, Ohio State University Library, Columbus (hereafter cited as Huie Papers).
23. Huie to Wilkins, October 12, 1955.
24. William Bradford Huie to Basil Walters, October 18, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
25. Huie to Wilkins, October 12, 1955.
26. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 17, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a; Huie to Walters, October 18, 1955.
27. Huie to Mitch, October 17, 1955.
28. Huie to Walters, October 18, 1955.
29. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 21, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
30. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 23, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a; William Bradford Huie, interview, conducted by Blackside, Inc., August 3, 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/.
31. Huie to Mitch, October 23, 1955.
32. Ellen Whitten, “Justice Unearthed: Revisiting the Murder of Emmett Till” (Honor’s thesis, Rhodes College, 2005), 17. http://www.rhodes.edu/images/content/Academics/Ellen_Whitten.pdf.
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