Emmett Till
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Rachel Bryant began posting comments on the site two years earlier to defend her grandmother against vicious and vitriolic attacks by other commentators. See comments under David T. Beito, “60 Minutes Story on Emmett Till Targets Carolyn Bryant,” History News Network, http://hnn.us/blog/8070. I have verified that Rachael Bryant is a granddaughter of Carolyn Donham and is the daughter of Thomas Lamar and Marsha Bryant, of Raleigh, North Carolina. In January 2011, Marsha Bryant told Davis Houck of Florida State University that nothing had been done on the book since Frank Bryant’s death in April 2010 (Davis Houck, telephone conversation with author, January 25, 2011).
Chapter 11
1. John Anderson, “‘Till’ Reviews Social History Lesson, 30 Years Later,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1985, D1; “TV Highlights: New Night Court Characters,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1985, D11. Wilson, considered the best high school basketball player in the nation at the time of his death, is still being mourned and was the subject of a seventy-eight-minute documentary. See Amani Martin and Ed Schillinger, Benji: The True Story of a Life Cut Short (ESPN Films, 2012).
2. The documentary can currently be viewed at www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/till/till.html.
3. Joe Atkins, “Emmett Till: More Than a Murder,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 3H; Joe Atkins and Tom Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past to ‘Stay Dead,’” Jackson Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 1H.
4. See, for example, Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case” (Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 1963), 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); Warren Breed, “Comparative Newspaper Handling of the Emmett Till Case,” Journalism Quarterly 35 (Summer 1958): 291–98; William M. Simpson, “Reflections on a Murder: The Emmett Till Case,” in Southern Miscellany: Essays in History in Honor of Glover Moore, ed. Frank Allen Dennis (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981), 177–200. On the dearth of scholarship on the Till case during this period, see Clenora Hudson, “The Unearthing of Emmett Till: A Compelling Process,” Iowa Alumni Review 41, no. 5 (October 1988): 18–23; Clenora Hudson-Weems, “Resurrecting Emmett Till: The Catalyst of the Modern Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (November 1998): 179–88.
5. Philip C. Kolin, “Forgotten Manuscripts: ‘Blues for Emmett Till’: The Earliest Extant Song about the Murder of Emmett Till,” African American Review 42, nos. 3–4 (Fall–Winter 2008): 455; Philip C. Kolin, “Haunting America: Emmett Till in Music and Song,” Southern Cultures (Fall 2009): 118–21. See also Christopher Metress, “‘No Justice, No Peace’: The Figure of Emmett Till in African American Literature,” MELUS 28, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 87–103.
6. Kolin, “Haunting America,” 119, 121; Frederick Bock, “A Prize Winning Poet Fails to Measure Up,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1960, C12; Mel Watkins, “Gwendolyn Brooks, 83, Passionate Poet, Dies,” New York Times, December 5, 2000, C22. For a chronological sampling of many of these literary efforts, see Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 291–345. For a study of the Brooks pieces, see Vivian M. May, “Maids Mild and Dark Villains, Sweet Magnolias and Sleeping Blood,” in Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, ed. Harriett Pollack and Christopher Metress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 98–111; Laura Dawkins, “It Could Have Been My Son: Maternal Empathy in Gwendolyn Brooks’s and Audre Lorde’s Till Poems,” in Pollack and Metress, Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, 112–27.
7. For the full story of Serling’s attempt to portray the Till murder on television, see Christopher Metress, “Submitted for Their Approval: Rod Serling and the Lynching of Emmett Till,” Mississippi Quarterly 61, nos. 1–2 (Winter/Spring 2008): 143–72. After Serling’s death, his wife, Carol, donated her husband’s papers to Ithaca College, where Serling had taught from 1967 until 1975. Carol Serling also served on the board of the school. The original version of “Noon at Tuesday” received its first public reading at Ithaca College in March 2008. See Rebecca James, “A Tale Too Explosive for ’50s TV,” Syracuse (N.Y.) Post Standard, March 27, 2008, D1–2.
8. James Baldwin, Blues for Mister Charlie (New York: Dial Books, 1964), dedication page and xiv; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 319–21; Claudia Cassidy, “Baldwin’s New Play: Abuse with Tom-Toms,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 10, 1964, J5; Lee A. Daniels, “James Baldwin, Eloquent Writer in Behalf of Civil Rights, Is Dead,” New York Times, December 2, 1987, A1; Howard Taubman, “Theater: Blues for Mister Charlie,” New York Times, April 24, 1964, 24; see also Brian Norman, “James Baldwin’s Unifying Polemic: Racial Segregation, Moral Integration, and the Polarizing Figure of Emmett Till,” in Pollack and Metress, Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, 75–97.
9. See, for example, Patrick Chura, “Prolepsis and Anachronism: Emmett Till and the History of To Kill a Mockingbird,” Southern Literary Journal 32, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 1–26. Chura notes that both the Till case and To Kill a Mockingbird “combine the dual icons of the ‘black rapist’ and concomitant fear of black male sexuality with mythologized vulnerable and sacred Southern womanhood.” Also, both trials include all-male, all-white juries, made up mostly of farmers; both juries reach verdicts against the black victim/defendant despite evidence to the contrary; in each instance, a fair-minded judge presided over the proceedings and a dedicated attorney (Gerald Chatham/Atticus Finch) sought justice for the black male involved. “In both cases,” continues Chura, “the black victim is a diminished physical specimen of a fully grown man. In both cases, the press or media emerge as a force for racial justice. In both cases, the concept of child murder figures prominently in the calculus of revenge for a racial and social shame of a class of poor Southern whites.”
10. Julius Thompson, “Till,” in Blues Said: Walk On (Houston: Energy Blacksouth Press, 1977), 9–11, reprinted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 321–23; Audre Lorde, “Afterimages,” Cream City Review 17, no. 2 (Fall 1981): 119–23, reprinted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 323–27; Dawkins, “It Could Have Been My Son,” 112–27. These and dozens of other Till-inspired works published into the new millennium are referenced in “Literary Representations of the Lynching of Emmett Till,” in Pollack and Metress, Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, 224–50.
11. Video and transcript available at NBC Learn K–12, http://archives.nbclearn.com; Atkins and Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past,” 1H.
12. Lee Winfrey, “‘Eyes on Prize’ Recommended Viewing on Civil Rights History,” Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle-Telegram, January 21, 1987, B6; Ed Siegel, “Behind ‘Eyes on the Prize’ Henry Hampton Reflects on a Series 19 Years in the Making,” Boston Globe, January 21, 1987, 6; Joseph Pryweller, “Eyes on the Prize Author Has Won Respect for His Civil Rights Work,” Newport News (Va.) Daily Press, April 7, 1991, I1.
13. See interviews with Charles Diggs, November 6, 1986; James L. Hicks, November 2, 1985; William Bradford Huie, August 30, 1979; Rutha Mae Jackson and Willie Hill Jackson, August 29, 1979; Curtis Jones, November 12, 1985; J. W. Kellum and Amzie Moore, August 29, 1979; Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, November 7, 1985, gathered as part of Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Blackside, Inc., Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize.
14. Winfrey, “‘Eyes on Prize’ Recommended Viewing,” B6; Siegel, “Behind ‘Eyes on the Prize,’” 61; Julian Bond, email to author, October 18, 2013; Pryweller, “Eyes on the Prize Author,” I1. For the book, see Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking Press, 1988).
15. Pryweller, “Eyes on the Prize Author,” I1; Jesse McKinley, “Henry Hampton Dies at 58; Produced ‘Eyes on the Prize,’” New York Times, November 24, 1998, 10; “‘Eyes on the Pr
ize’ Returns to PBS,” Washington Informer, September 28, 2006, 26; “‘Eyes on the Prize II’ Wins Three Golden Eagle Awards,” Los Angeles Sentinel, December 11, 1990, A8; “Landmark ‘Eyes on the Prize I and II’ Return to PBS,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 8, 1993, B3.
16. Stephen J. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (New York: Free Press, 1988), viii.
17. The dissertation appeared as Clenora Frances Hudson, “Emmett Till: The Impetus for the Modern Civil Rights Movement” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1988). For her published volume, see Clenora Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement (Troy, Mich.: Bedford Publishers, 1994). The book is currently in a revised fourth edition, which appeared in 2006 from AuthorHouse in Bloomington, Indiana. Hudson-Weems has alienated herself from other Emmett Till scholars by proclaiming that they have largely plagiarized her work. She has self-published two volumes in which she has aggressively yet erroneously put forth this claim. See Clenora Hudson-Weems, The Definitive Emmett Till: Passion and Battle of a Woman for Truth and Intellectual Justice (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2006); Clenora Hudson-Weems, Plagiarism: Physical and Intellectual Lynchings: An Emmett Till Continuum (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2007).
18. See Whitfield, Death in the Delta, 56–57; Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till, 12, 26.
19. Andrea Stone and Jerry Mitchell, “Evers Case Inspires Kin of Others,” USA Today, December 24, 1990, 3A.
20. Stone and Mitchell, “Evers Case Inspires Kin,” 3A; Tony Jones, “Cochran to Reopen Infamous Till Case,” Michigan Chronicle (Detroit), September 13, 1995, 1-A.
21. For more on the Evers case and subsequent conviction of Beckwith, see Bobby DeLaughter, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (New York: Scribner, 2001); Myrlie Evers-Williams, with Melinda Blau, Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999); Willie Morris, The Ghosts of Medgar Evers: A Tale of Race, Murder, Mississippi, and Hollywood (New York: Random House, 1998); Maryanne Vollers, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).
22. Tony Jones, “Cochran May Open Till Case,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), August 26–30, 1995, 1; “Johnnie Cochran May Reopen Emmett Till Murder Case,” San Francisco Sun-Reporter, December 14, 1995, 3.
23. Jones, “Cochran May Open Till Case,” 1.
24. “Johnnie Cochran May Reopen,” 3.
25. In his autobiography, published seven years after he announced his intentions, Cochran briefly mentioned the Till case but said nothing about any plans, current or former, for reopening it. See Johnnie Cochran, with David Fisher, A Lawyer’s Life (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), 111–12.
26. Mamie Till-Mobley, author telephone interview, December 3, 1996.
27. Keith Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Megan Scott, “Film Cracks Open ’55 Racial Slaying,” Ft. Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette, February 28, 2006, 2D; Connie Bloom, “Filmmaker Delivers Message on Injustice,” McClatchy-Tribune Business News, February 23, 2007, 1.
28. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014; “Takes Five; Keith Beauchamp,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 24, 2006, A2.
29. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Felicia R. Lee, “Directors Elated by Plan to Revisit 1955 Murder,” New York Times, May 12, 2004, B4; Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 277.
30. Dawn Turner Trice, “Renewed Focus on Till Case May Rewrite History,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2004, 2C; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
31. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014.
32. Scott, “Film Cracks Open,” 2D; Joe Neumaier, “Filmmaker’s ‘Untold Story’ Drives Inquiry in Racial Killing,” New York Daily News, August 16, 2005, 32; Patricia Poist, “Haunted by Ghost of Mississippi,” Lancaster (Pa.) Sunday News, January 16, 2005, 1; Dawn Turner Trice, “Renewed Focus on Till Case May Rewrite History,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2004, 2C.
33. David Holmberg, “The Legacy of Emmett Till,” Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, September 4, 1994, 10A.
34. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
35. Ali Rahman, “Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” New York Amsterdam News, November 21, 2002, 4.
36. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014.
37. Chris Jones, “Chronicle of a Life Untold: Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” BET Weekend, October 1999, 4; Christopher Benson, “Troubled Waters,” Chicago, September 1999, 26; Chris Jones, “Everyone’s Child,” Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1999, S5, 10; Richard Christiansen, “Reviving the Power of the Till Tragedy,” Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1999, 1–2.
38. Mamie Till-Mobley and David Barr III, The Face of Emmett Till (Woodstock, Ill.: Dramatic Publishing, 1999), 329–31.
39. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014; Bobby DeLaughter, email to author, June 20, 2014.
40. Kam Williams, “Discourse with the Director of Award-Winning Emmett Till Documentary,” Washington Informer, October 13, 2005, 15.
41. William Nunnelley, “Metress Hopes Book on Emmett Till Will Clear Up Some Misconceptions,” January 24, 2003, http://www.samford.edu/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=21474841550#.U-RjEPldXup.
42. See Chris Crowe, Mississippi Trial, 1955 (New York: Phillis Fogelman Books, 2002). In January 2003, Crowe published a nonfiction title, Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Murder (New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2003). Crowe had actually stumbled across the Emmett Till case in 1998 while conducting research for his book Presenting Mildred D. Taylor (New York: Twayne, 1999). Taylor made a reference to the Till murder in one of her essays, which piqued Crowe’s curiosity. What he learned set him on a course for a new project. Once he finished the Taylor book, he began working on a book on Emmett Till, even interviewing Mamie Till-Mobley over the telephone in the process. Jim Blasingame, “‘A Crime That’s So Unjust!’: Chris Crowe Tells About the Death of Emmett Till,” Alan Review 2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 22–24; Chris Crowe, author telephone interview, March 24, 2014; Crowe, Getting Away with Murder, 11. Two other noteworthy titles that appeared during the renewed interest in the Till case after the mid-1980s include not only fiction but poetry. See Lewis Nordan, Wolf Whistle: A Novel (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1993); Marilyn Nelson, A Wreath for Emmett Till (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).
43. Mamie Till-Mobley, author telephone interview, April 15, 2002; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 278.
44. Rahman, “Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” 4.
45. Christopher Benson, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014.
46. “Mamie Till Mobley, Heroic Mother, Mourned,” People’s World, January 24, 2003, http://www.peoplesworld.org/mamie-till-mobley-heroic-mother-mourned; Rahman, “Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” 4. Around this time, Mississippi assistant attorney general Frank Spencer affirmed to journalists that “we welcome any evidence from any source that would let us know what happened there” (Rebecca Segall and David Holmberg, “Who Killed Emmett Till?,” Nation 276, no. 4 [February 3, 2003]: 38).
47. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Mike Small, author telephone interview, July 20, 2014; Mike Small, email to author, July 21, 2014.
48. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Segall and Holmberg, “Who Killed Emmett Till?,” 38.
49. Brent Staples, “The Murder of Emmett Louis Till, Revisited,” New York Times, November 11, 2002, A16.
50. Herb Boyd, “The Lynching of Emmett Till,” New York Amsterdam News, November 21, 2002, 4.
51. Stanley Nelson, author telephone interview, October 15, 2
013; Ron Howell, “A Film with a Mission,” Newsday, January 20, 2003, B6.
52. See Stanley Nelson, prod., The Murder of Emmett Till (Firelight Media, 2002); Keith Beauchamp, prod., The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005).
53. Lee, “Directors Elated,” B4; Keith Beauchamp, online conversation with author, June 4, 2005, transcript in author’s possession; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
54. Howell, “Film with a Mission,” B6.
55. Nelson, author telephone interview; Howell, “Film with a Mission,” B6.
56. Bennie M. Currie, “Films, Books Revisit Saga of Slain Teen Emmett Till,” Kansas City Call, December 20–26, 2002, 4; Monroe Dodd, Pursuit of Truth (Kansas City, Mo.: Kansas City Library, 2014), 16.
57. Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013.
58. C. J. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” Pitch (Kansas City), March 23, 2006, 16; Drew Jubera, “Civil Rights–Era Murder Cases,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 3, 2007, A1; Laura Parker, “Perseverance Pays Off for Civil Rights Activist,” USA Today, March 19, 2007, A2; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 4–5, 7, 10.
59. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 17; Parker, “Perseverance Pays Off,” A2; Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, March 8, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 4–6.
60. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 17; Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 6–8.
61. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and March 8, 2014.
62. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and March 8, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 16.
63. Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 6–7. Donald Burger died in 2010 at age seventy.
64. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 13, 17; Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013; Benson, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 16.
65. Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013.