Emmett Till

by Devery S. Anderson

  33. As two researchers into the Till case see it, “Increasingly do we now realize that Huie had been bamboozled and Look hoodwinked” (Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009], 151). Although that is one possibility, it seems to me that Huie was not deceived by Milam and Bryant, but backed off of the story for the reasons I cite above.

  34. Huie to Walters, October 18, 1955.

  35. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 25, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.

  36. Huie, interview, for Eyes on the Prize.

  37. John W. Milam, signed release; Carolyn Bryant, signed release, both in Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353b.

  38. Milam, signed release; Bryant, signed release.

  39. Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (New York: Putnam, 1977), 388.

  40. Milam, signed release.

  41. Milam, signed release; Bryant, signed release.

  42. Huie, Wolf Whistle, 38–41.

  43. John W. Whitten Jr. to William Bradford Huie, November 2, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353b.

  44. William Bradford Huie, “The Shocking Story of an Approved Killing in Mississippi,” Look, January 24, 1956, 46–50.

  45. Roy Wilkins to Branch Officers, January 6, 1956, Evers Papers, box 2, fd. 19.

  46. Congressional Record, January 12, 1956, Appendix, A247–49 http://www.heinonline.org; “Rep. Diggs Comments in Congress on Look’s Story about the Emmett Till Case,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 19.

  47. Congressional Record, January 16, 1956, Appendix, A337 http://www.heinonline.org; “S-T’s Reply to Look Read to Congressmen,” Jackson State Times, January 17, 1956, 1A, as quoted in Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 49.

  48. Congressional Record, January 17, 1956, 697, and Appendix, A387–38 http://www.heinonline.org; “Negro’s Answer to Look Story,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 18, 1956, 8.

  49. Susan M. Weill, “Mississippi’s Daily Press in Three Crises,” in The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement, ed. David R. Davies (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 28. In his 1954 editorial, as quoted in Weill, Lee said: “Southern Negroes may lose a lot more than they gain. Integration in the North and East is not a howling success. This movement to integrate the schools of the South is loaded with more racial dynamite than appears on the surface and the Negro will be the one who is blown away.”

  50. “Son No Braggart, Says Mrs. Bradley,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1956, 1, 2.

  51. “What Milam, Bryant Say of Huie Story,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 19; “Milam Hires Sumner, Miss., Lawyer—Says He May Sue Look Magazine,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 14, 1956, 3; “Till Exposé by Writer Shakes Dixie,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1956, 2.

  52. Jay Milner, “Milam Says He’s ‘Not Sure’ If He Has Grounds for Libel Suit,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 15, 1956, 1.

  53. W. C. Shoemaker, author telephone interview, August 20, 2010.

  54. “What Huie Says,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 19.

  55. “Ask New Till Probe,” Birmingham (Ala.) World, January 21, 1956, 1; “Ask New Indictment in Till Kidnap Case,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 21, 1956, 2. Four years after “Shocking Story” appeared, Huie said that Wilkins and his wife read the article and considered it to be “fair” (Huie, Wolf Whistle, 45).

  56. “‘Too Busy’ to Reopen Till Kidnap Case, Judge Says,” Washington Afro-American, January 21, 1956, 11.

  57. 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.

  58. “Recall the Murders in Mississippi,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 24, 1955, 6, and Washington Afro-American, December 17, 1955, 1, 2; “Writer Challenges Brownell to Act in Till Kidnap-Murder Case,” Baltimore Afro-American, 2.

  59. “Writer Challenges Brownell,” 2.

  60. “Justice Dept. Says ‘No’ to New Probe into Till Murder,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), February 12, 1956, 22.

  61. Huie, Wolf Whistle, 45; Thornton, “Murder of Emmett Till,” 99.

  62. “Bombshell in the Till Case,” New York Post, January 11, 1956, 1; “New Angle to Till Case,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, January 11, 1956, 4, both quoted in Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 48–49.

  63. “Till Case Film Rights Secured,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 19, 1956, 29.

  64. “Milam, Bryant Sign for Till Case Movie,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 28, 1956, 1.

  65. “Milam, Bryant Sign for Till Case Movie,” 1.

  66. Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 389; Sharon Monteith, “The Murder of Emmett Till in the Melodramatic Imagination: William Bradford Huie and Vin Packer in the 1990s,” in Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, ed. Harriet Pollack and Christopher Metress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 36; Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 60–61.

  67. William Bradford Huie, “What’s Happened to the Emmett Till Killers,” Look, January 22, 1957, 63–66, 68.

  68. “Say Coleman Cites NAACP, Diggs for Till Case Outcome,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 12, 1956, 1, 2; “Coleman and Look at Odds on Till Case,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 1–2.

  69. “Coleman and Look at Odds,” 1–2.

  70. Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 50; Dave Tell, “The ‘Shocking Story’ of Emmett Till and the Politics of Public Confession,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 2 (May 2008): 158. Tell has detailed Huie’s “Shocking Story” and its evolution into a confessional piece, while pointing out that neither Huie nor Milam and Bryant intended the article to be one. In his book on public confession, Tell analyzes the story further and asks, “So how is it that despite Huie’s excisions . . . despite the intentions of the author, the killers, and their lawyers, the ‘Shocking Story’ is nearly universally remembered as a confession? . . . The answer will come as no surprise: the ‘Shocking Story’ became a confession because, politically speaking, it needed to be one.” See Dave Tell, Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 66.

  71. 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), 150. I am grateful to the Beitos for making this source known and for their thoughtful analysis.

  72. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant in Confession Story,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), January 14, 1956, 2; Huie, “Shocking Story,” 50; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 271n6.

  73. Huie to Mitch, October 21, 1955.

  74. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant,” 1, 2.

  75. David A. Shostak, “Crosby Smith: Forgotten Witness to a Mississippi Nightmare,” Negro Bulletin 38, no. 1 (December 1974–January 1975): 321.

  76. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant,” 2.

  77. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant,” 2; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 151–52. Reed denied this possible scenario both to the Beitos and to me. Willie Reed, author interview, February 6, 2007.

  78. See Amos Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear Emmett Till Whistle,” California Eagle, January 26, 1956, 1–2, 4; Amos Dixon, “Milam Master-Minded Emmett Till Killing,” California Eagle, February 2, 1956, 1–2; Amos Dixon, “Till Case: Torture and Murder,” California Eagle, February 9, 1956, 1–2; Amos Dixon, “Till Case: Torture and Murder,” California Eagle, February 16, 1956, 1–2; Amos Dixon, “South Wins Out in Till Lynching Trial,” California Eagle, February 23, 1956, 2.

  79. Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear,” 1.

  80. Olive Arnold Adams, Tim
e Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till (Mound Bayou, Miss: Regional Council of Negro Leadership, 1956), 15–21.

  81. T. R. M. Howard, “Stark Terror Reigns in Mississippi Delta,” Washington Afro-American, October 1, 1955, 19; 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 Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, eds., Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965 (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2006), 125–27; “Dr. Howard: Situation in Mississippi Extremely Serious,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 8, 1955, 4.

  82. Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 25–29; T. R. M. Howard, foreword, in Adams, Time Bomb, 6–7.

  83. Chester Washington, “Howard Locates Two Men,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 15, 1955.

  84. Linda Beito, telephone interview with Henry Lee Loggins, July 21, 2001, transcript in author’s possession.

  85. Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear,” 2; Dixon, “Milam Master-Minded,” 1–2; Adams, Time Bomb, 19–20.

  86. Hicks, “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” 4; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 195–96.

  87. Dixon, “Till Case: Torture and Murder,” February 9, 1956, 2.

  88. “Dr. Howard Is Selling Property,” Washington Afro-American, December 17, 1955, 1–2; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 163.

  89. Price to Rosen, February 29, 1956; Office memorandum from Mr. [F. L.] Price to Mr. [Alex] Rosen, March 1, 1956, FBI FOIA release to Devery S. Anderson, 2006, re Emmett Till (hereafter cited as FBI file on Emmett Till).

  90. Office memorandum from F. L. Price to the Director [J. Edgar Hoover], February 29, 1956, FBI file on Emmett Till.

  91. Louis E. Lomax, “Henry Loggins Found, but Refuses to Leave Jail Cell,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 12, 1955, 8; Louis E. Lomax, “Milam Jails His Handyman,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 20, 1956, 5. During his interview with Keith Beauchamp for the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005), Loggins mentioned that Milam had accused him of stealing iron and that he had spent six months in jail. In the film, Loggins professed his innocence of the charges.

  92. Lomax, “Henry Loggins Found,” 8.

  93. Lomax, “Milam Jails His Handyman,” 5.

  94. “Audience Donates to Till Witness,” Chicago Defender, March 17, 1956, 10.

  95. Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper, 1959), 127.

  Chapter 10

  1. Mamie Till-Mobley, author telephone interview, December 3, 1996.

  2. “Mrs. Bradley Bares Dawson Aid,” Daily Defender (Chicago), October 22, 1956, 1; “Till’s Mother Says Ike Ignored Pleas for Help,” Chicago Defender, November 3, 1956, 1; Alfred Duckett, “Adlai in Tribute to Dr. Johnson,” Chicago Defender, November 10, 1956, 10.

  3. “People and Places,” Chicago Defender, December 8, 1956, 2; Ethel L. Payne, “‘Ladies’ Day for Adlai Lures Smart Set from All Over to Dine, Chat,” Chicago Defender, November 3, 1956, 15.

  4. “The Till Case People One Year Later,” Ebony 5, no. 11 (October 1956): 69; Chester Higgins, “Mrs. Bradley Becomes a Teacher,” Jet 17, no. 18 (September 1, 1960): 13–15; Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 217–29, 251, 254.

  5. Higgins, “Mrs. Bradley Becomes a Teacher,” 16; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 225, 228, 270–72; Mamie Till-Mobley, biographical summary (Emmett Till Foundation, November 1994), copy in author’s possession.

  6. “Look Sued for Million Libel by Till’s Mother,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 22, 1958, 8; “Emmett Till’s Mother Sues Look,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 23, 1958, 14; “Emmett Till’s Mom Loses Libel Suit,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), June 23, 1959, 2; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 215–16.

  7. “Mother Says Son Libeled by Stories,” Daily Defender (Chicago), January 22, 1958, 3; “Dismiss Appeal by Till’s Mother,” Daily Defender (Chicago), May 17, 1960, A2; “Appeal Till Case to High Court,” Daily Defender (Chicago), October 4, 1960, 2.

  8. Till-Mobley, author telephone interview; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 232.

  9. “Till’s Mother Marches,” caption under photo, Jet 39, no. 4 (October 29, 1970): 33.

  10. “Emmett Till Foundation Holds Annual Banquet,” Daily Defender (Chicago), July 25, 1966, 8; Emmett Till Foundation, Statement of Mission and Purpose, copy in author’s possession.

  11. Till-Mobley, author telephone interview; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 242–43.

  12. “Time Heals Few Wounds for Emmett Till’s Mother,” Jet 66, no. 5 (April 9, 1984): 55–56.

  13. Till-Mobley, biographical summary.

  14. Douglas Kreutz, “Hundreds Watch Unveiling of King Statue in City Park,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver), September 6, 1976, 6; Dave Curtain, “Repaired Statue Renews Legacy of Rights Battles,” Denver Post, May 15, 2005, A1. Ten months after the statue dedication, Ed Rose filed a $35,000 lawsuit against the Denver-backed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation for money it still owed him. The foundation countersued Rose, saying that the statue did not resemble King, and that because of Rose’s “poor workmanship” and “lackadaisical approach,” the foundation lost out on a $10,000 bicentennial grant and $15,000 in other expected donations. On top of this, Philip Schiavo, president of Roman Bronze Work, the Corona, New York, foundry that cast the statue, began demanding the $13,500 he was still owed, and threatened to go to Denver City Park and “start to chop the statue down and let the police arrest me.” The foundation eventually paid Rose his remaining commission. The sculpture was later replaced with a $700,000 statue of King alone, and the Rose sculpture was donated to the Martin Luther King Cultural Center in Pueblo, Colorado, in 2002. Since the move, the statue has been vandalized with racist graffiti, and in April 2005, an arm on one of the figures was nearly severed. The sculpture was repaired and rededicated in May 2005 (Curtain, “Repaired Statue Renews Legacy,” A1). Rose died in 2009 at age sixty-four. See “King Statue Center of Dispute,” Greeley (Colo.) Tribune, July 6, 1977, 1; Cinder Parmenter, “Overdue Bills Endanger Bronze of King,” Denver Post, July 7, 1977, 17; Virginia Culver, “Statue Stirred Controversy,” Denver Post, May 7, 2009, A-08.

  15. Kreutz, “Hundreds Watch Unveiling,” 6; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 247–48.

  16. Fred Grim, “Memorial to Honor Civil Rights Martyrs,” Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), July 31, 1988, 1D; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 257–59; Morris Dees, with Steve Fiffer, A Lawyer’s Journey: The Morris Dees Story (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2001), 333–34; D. Michael Cheers, “Dedicate Memorial to 40 Who Died in Civil Rights Struggle,” Jet 77, no. 7 (November 20, 1989): 4–16.

  17. “Chicago’s 71st Street Is Renamed for Emmett Till,” Jet 80, no. 17 (August 12, 1991): 4–5; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 260.

  18. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 268–70; Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 896–97. For more on the original Selma marches, see Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987); John Lewis, with Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998); Townsend Davis, Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); J. Mills Thornton III, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002).

  19. James Janega and Mathew Walberg, “Mamie Till-Mobley, 1921–2003,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 7, 2003, 2C; Clarence Page, “Black History Isn’t Just for Blacks Anymore,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 15, 2003, 1.

  20. “Mamie Till-Mobley, Civil Rights Heroine,
Eulogized in Chicago,” Jet 103, no. 5 (January 27, 2003): 14, 18, 52.

  21. Till-Mobley, author telephone interview.

  22. “Mamie Till-Mobley, Civil Rights Heroine,” 52.

  23. As two scholars note, “lynching images, such as those of Emmett Till, are too visually provocative, too viscerally challenging, to be contained by time or distance” (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]: 266).

  24. Wheeler Parker Jr., Crosby Smith Jr., and Simeon Wright, author interview, February 7, 2007, Argo, Ill., comments by Wright.

  25. Simeon Wright, with Herb Boyd, Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), 86.

  26. “Till Case People,” 68, 72.

  27. William Parker, author telephone interview, April 30, 2014.

  28. William Parker, author telephone interview; Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Wright; Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 87.

  29. William Parker, author telephone interview; Martha Wright Baker, author telephone interview, May 5, 2014. Baker is the daughter of Will Wright.

  30. William Parker, author telephone interview.

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

  32. William Parker, author telephone interview; Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 99; “Rites Held Saturday for Moses Wright, 85,” Chicago Defender, August 8, 1977, 2.

  33. William Parker, author telephone interview; Confidential source E to author, August 15, 2011.

  34. William Parker, author telephone interview.

  35. Mary Sanchez, “Murder’s Horror Haunts the Living,” Kansas City Star, April 20, 2004, B7.

  36. David A. Shostak, “Crosby Smith: Forgotten Witness to a Mississippi Nightmare,” Negro Bulletin 38, no. 1 (December 1974–January 1975): 321.

  37. George Curry, “Killed for Whistling at a White Woman,” Emerge, August 1995, 27.