by Till-Mobley, Mamie; Benson, Christopher; Jackson, Jesse Rev (FRW)
All of the twelve black reporters and photographers covering the trial were based in Mound Bayou. Dr. Howard’s place was big, all right, but not quite big enough to accommodate everyone, so some out-of-town people stayed at a motel owned by a woman named Mrs. Anderson. But it seems no one could stay put. Almost as soon as they landed in town that Sunday, Simeon Booker, Clotye Murdock, and photographer David Jackson traveled to Money to talk to Papa Mose. Jimmy Hicks went a different way; he always seemed to be going his own way. But they would all have fascinating stories to swap sometime later. The Ebony-Jet team ran into a truckload of white men carrying guns. It was not hunting season. But, as Papa Mose would remark, that depends on “what you’re hunting.” The journalists took this as a warning not to stray too far. When Strider would set down the rule the next morning that there would be no mixing of black and white reporters, it would become clear that all the local forces were working together to draw a sharp line for blacks covering the murder trial. It means something to a reporter when you start drawing lines. It means you have something hidden somewhere. Something hidden is exactly what a reporter wants to find. Digging for something hidden is exactly what a reporter lives to do.
Jimmy Hicks knew how to dig. He was a seasoned investigative reporter and, as he would recall in his series, his nose took him to the black juke joints of the area. There were stories in those juke joints. Stories that had been carried on hot summer breezes out of the cotton fields. Stories that had been served up by the shot at the bars. Pickers in overalls and barefoot gals in cotton dresses like to tell stories straight up, or over the rocks, and over the blaring music in the juke joints of the Delta. There were stories about people who saw things, people who heard things. Jimmy Hicks listened and over time he heard names and facts and situations. What he learned most of all was that there was more on the line in the Delta than just a story.
Dr. Howard had been hearing stories, too. Stories about people who had seen things, people who had heard things. He didn’t have to go to the juke joints. People came to him. They came to him with names. Dr. Howard had found out about a witness who had seen two black men on the back of a truck with Emmett in Sunflower County. Milam and Bryant and maybe one or two other white men had been on the scene. Jimmy Hicks had heard a couple of names, the names of two black men connected to J. W. Milam. Two men who had disappeared after Emmett’s murder: Henry Lee Loggins and Levy “Too Tight” Collins, sometimes called “Leroy.”
Meanwhile, a couple of white reporters violated Sheriff Strider’s rule about talking to blacks, and comparing notes. These reporters slipped out to Mound Bayou on Monday night and told Simeon Booker and other black reporters they thought the trial was doomed. The only eyewitnesses for the prosecution were going to be Papa Mose and little Simmy. They could only testify about the abduction. The investigation into the rest of it had been limited because the prosecutors hadn’t gotten any help. There hadn’t been any resources to speak of. And Sheriff Strider, the chief investigator, was working for the other side, raising questions about the identity of Emmett’s body. There was some talk that the defense might not even put on one single witness. The fear now was that there was only going to be a show trial for the media.
No one was going to let that happen. Jimmy Hicks had information, Dr. Howard had information, and Ruby Hurley felt that might be enough information to have everything moved to Sunflower County, where it was beginning to look like the murder actually had occurred, and where everybody thought there might be a better chance of getting a conviction. They knew they would have to reach out to the witnesses, Hicks and Booker reported. The NAACP folks had been out looking. They knew that people were scared about giving up information. They knew they were going to need more time. The only way to get more time would be to reveal the information to the authorities. But the white authorities couldn’t be trusted and probably wouldn’t take the word of NAACP people and the black reporters, anyway.
Despite it all, the decision was made to bring in some white reporters who could reach out to the authorities, maybe get them to do the right thing. The decision was made that Simeon Booker would talk to Clark Porteus of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. Like Booker, he was a former Nieman fellow. A couple of other white reporters were brought in and, after a little arguing and a lot of negotiating, an agreement was struck to share information, according to the reports. But they would hold off on reporting any stories until the witnesses could be secured. The white reporters would appeal to the authorities for help in protecting the witnesses and delaying the trial.
Now, ordinarily, there are two things reporters will never do. The first is to share information with one another. They’re much too competitive to do that. The second is to get involved with law enforcement, revealing information to help the police track down criminals or witnesses to a crime. That crosses the line. The reporters are supposed to stay outside the stories they cover. If they are out there helping, then they’re part of the stories. But these reporters quickly worked it all out. This trial was the biggest story many of them had covered. It was not going to be a complete story without these witnesses, and they needed one another to get the information together. As for the second part, well, somebody figured out that they would have been obstructing justice if they didn’t help out, Booker wrote. Now for the final part, the safety of the witnesses. How could they trust the law enforcement people? Strider already was showing his true colors. These reporters might be jeopardizing people who came forward. Dr. Howard agreed to pay for the relocation of any witnesses who agreed to testify, and hopefully that would take care of everything.
The call for new witnesses may have been a surprise to the court, but it was a shock to the defense team. No one had ever imagined that witnesses might come forward to testify against white men accused of killing a black person.
As both Hicks and Booker reported later, teams were formed of sheriff’s deputies, reporters, and NAACP people. The black journalists included Hicks, Booker, Clotye Murdock, L. Alex Wilson, Moses Newson, David Jackson, and Ernest Withers. NAACP representatives included Medgar Evers, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and, of course, Ruby Hurley, who put on a red bandanna and work clothes to help her fit in when she walked out into the fields, trying to convince people to trust her. That was the only way it was going to work. Black witnesses might trust other black folks, if they would trust anyone at all. But they were not going to trust anybody they thought was an outsider.
There were other risks, too. On Monday, Moses Newson had made the rounds with Medgar Evers, Ruby Hurley, and Amzie Moore, all dressed in work clothes. As they searched the plantations for witnesses, they talked about how careful they would have to be. Newson would recall later that they didn’t want to scare anybody away. But they also didn’t know who to trust. After all, there was talk that at least a couple of black men had been loyal to J. W. Milam. There had even been talk that it was a black man, not Carolyn Bryant, who first told Roy Bryant about “the boy from Chicago.” So, there was no telling who might turn you in, once you got to talking out there in those fields. Besides all that, Newson remembers, those sheriff’s deputies had a strange way of just popping up out of nowhere. Right in the middle of a cotton field, where there was no place to hide.
With all that in mind, the teams started out making the rounds to plantations on Tuesday and found several cases where potential witnesses had disappeared. The word was that they had been visited by whites.
Many people began to believe Collins and Loggins had been killed to keep them quiet. Jimmy Hicks believed something else. He had developed some amazing sources in such a short time, impressive when you realize just how wary those Delta black folks could be. But Hicks had good information that Too Tight was in jail in Charleston. Maybe Loggins, too. The prosecutors asked about it. Sheriff Strider denied it. And that seemed to be good enough for all the white folks. But the names Levy “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Lee Loggins would continue to haunt the proceedings. For Jimmy Hicks, though, th
ese men would become an obsession.
Even though the whereabouts of Collins and Loggins would remain a mystery, the teams were able to reach several witnesses and convince them to come forward. Still, there was one critical person everyone wanted to find. And the teams were racing the clock. Everything had to be in place by the following morning. Leflore County Sheriff George Smith was heading up one of the search parties. He had been the man contacted by Papa Mose and Uncle Crosby when Emmett was taken. This team finally got a break, a lead they couldn’t afford to pass up. Smith would lead the way, followed by Booker and Porteus in one car and Hicks in another. As it turns out, the sheriff’s team was traveling so fast, Booker and Hicks lost him and, the reporters wrote, they were left to wonder how things would turn out.
Willie Reed stopped what he was doing as he watched across the field. He didn’t know the names of the people, black people and white people, walking in his direction, and he wouldn’t remember their names after it was all over. He did know why they were there. He knew that even before they started talking to him. He had heard all about it on the radio, he had seen it in the paper, when he wasn’t picking. He had heard something else even before anybody heard anything on the radio. His own relatives had advised him to stay out of it. Not to tell what he had heard. He thought about all that and about what these strangers were talking about. But he didn’t think long. What they talked about would put his life in danger. His relatives had told him that much. That thought made him nervous. Very nervous. He was only eighteen. He had to live in this place for a long time and he didn’t want to live with the constant fear of dying. If he was going to keep living at all. But he agreed to cooperate. He recalled the horror of what some men had done early on a Sunday morning in a plantation shed, when they thought nobody was around. He had been unable to do anything to stop it from happening. Maybe now he could do something to keep it from ever happening again. Maybe.
CHAPTER 18
The story was front-page news Wednesday morning. That’s the way everybody had agreed it would go. The three white reporters were able to go forward with their insider accounts. They wrote about how the surprise witnesses were found and brought in to testify. That had been their reward, but it also had been part of the strategy of Medgar Evers, Dr. Howard, and Ruby Hurley, working with the black reporters. The Clark Porteus story in the Memphis Press-Scimitar made news across the country through the Scripps-Howard news service. Porteus wrote about how Dr. Howard had identified five witnesses who might be able to show that Emmett’s murder had taken place at the Sheridan Plantation in Sunflower County. Like Leflore, Sunflower was right next to Tallahatchie County. The Sheridan Plantation was managed by Leslie Milam, J. W. Milam’s brother, and Roy Bryant’s half-brother. The Porteus story gave a detailed account of Dr. Howard’s discussions with a witness about the possible scene of the crime. As many as four white men and two black men were seen with Emmett at the Sheridan Plantation in a green Chevy truck, like the one that drove off from Papa Mose’s place with Emmett in the back. Porteus had been the person who delivered Dr. Howard’s report to the prosecutors. Everyone saw right away that this new evidence might mean the whole trial would have to move to Sunflower County. They brought in Leflore County Sheriff George Smith, along with his deputy, John Ed Cothran; the Sunflower County district attorney; the Sunflower County prosecutor; and a forensic specialist sent down by Governor White. After Judge Swango granted the recess on Tuesday, Porteus wrote, the white officials went to the Sheridan Plantation to examine a shed. There was some information that the shed might have been the place where Emmett had been beaten, and where someone had been trying to clean up bloodstains. The officials didn’t find any traces of blood, and they probably scared off quite a few potential black witnesses in the process.
Even though Porteus didn’t mention Jimmy Hicks, he did report that two more potential witnesses, Levy “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Lee Loggins, were still being sought. And that only fueled the growing feeling that these two men were long gone.
Papa Mose was sworn in at nine-fifteen Wednesday morning. He had been waiting there in court over the last two days just for this moment. On Tuesday, he had stood around because there were no vacant seats. He’d just stood, waiting to be called. Then court was recessed so that the surprise witnesses could be found, and he’d had to wait overnight. But he had been waiting for this moment even longer than that. He had been waiting nearly a month to have the chance to bear witness, to tell everybody what had happened at his home the night Emmett was taken away.
Papa Mose wasn’t a tall man, but people had always looked up to him. He was respected by the people who knew him. When he spoke, they listened. In court, they listened intently, not so much because the white folks there cared about what he was saying, but because they cared more about what he was speaking against. Yes, he was testifying against Bryant and Milam. But, more than that, his very presence there spoke out against a custom that said you don’t do what he was about to do. You see, through his testimony, Papa Mose would cross a line that no one could remember a black man ever crossing in Mississippi. He wasn’t afraid of Bryant and Milam, sitting there in court, staring him down. “They oughtta be scared of me,” he had said before he got his moment, before he was sworn in, before he settled into the cane chair on the witness stand. This was Papa Mose’s chance. He had been waiting for this chance, for this moment. He was not going to let Bryant and Milam off. They had violated his home. They had terrorized his family. Beyond all else, they had tortured and killed Emmett.
The District Attorney Gerald Chatham started off. He addressed the witness as “Uncle Mose,” and the witness addressed him as “sir.” On questioning, Papa Mose once again told the story about how he was awakened at two in the morning by the banging on the front door and the voice calling out to him, the one identifying himself as “Mr. Bryant.” He told how he came out to the screened-in porch to see that there were two men, one with a flashlight and a gun, who asked for the boy from Chicago, the one who had done the talking. There was a third man, who stayed behind on the porch outside when the other two came in.
Papa Mose testified how the two men woke Emmett and threatened him and took him out to the truck. He told how he heard Milam ask someone in the truck whether Emmett was the right boy. There was that voice from inside the truck: “Yes.” A fourth person, a person with a voice that was lighter than a man’s voice. They put Emmett in the back of the truck. And they drove away.
Chatham looked straight across at Papa Mose. “Did you ever see your nephew alive again?”
Papa Mose swallowed. Then he spoke in a low voice. “No, sir.”
Chatham asked Papa Mose if he could identify the two men. This was the moment. A black man was actually being asked to take a stand in a Mississippi courtroom and accuse a white man of kidnapping a black boy.
“Yes, sir,” Papa Mose said. He could identify them, all right.
Chatham asked him to rise.
Papa Mose did right away. He stood up, straight, erect. He did not waver, he did not shake. It was very dramatic, and everything was suspended in the heat of that moment, the very moment Papa Mose had been waiting for. Chatham asked Papa Mose to indicate the men who came to his house that Sunday morning. Without hesitating, as if he had seen himself doing this in a thousand moments before this one, Papa Mose raised his arm.
At the black press table, off to the left, behind the rail, and near the window, Ernest Withers, the photographer shooting for the Defender, was also waiting for that moment. Ernest Withers knew what that moment meant, and what it would mean. It was a defiant moment that had to be preserved, even if the judge had restricted picture taking. So Ernest Withers pointed his camera very carefully, aimed it between the people in front of him, straight through the opening, right at Papa Mose. That’s where everybody else’s attention was drawn, too. Nobody, it seemed, was watching the black press table at that moment. At least you might hope that would be the case. So, with hope, with pati
ence, and with a steady hand, Ernest Withers waited for the moment.
As Papa Mose pointed, he felt the rush of anger in that room. The heat of the moment. As he would put it later, he could feel the blood of all those white people boiling. But there was scarcely a peep from the crowd. In fact, it was so quiet in that courtroom, you could hear the gentle whirring sound of the ceiling fans stirring the hot air. That, and a single click of a camera shutter over at the black press table. Papa Mose stood straight and firm against the weight of that room. “There he is,” he said, as he pointed directly at J. W. Milam. “And there is Mr. Bryant.”
That done, the moment past, Papa Mose took his seat once again.
As he did, from a spot near the jury, artist Franklin McMahon was preparing for Life magazine a drawing of the same dramatic event photographed by Withers. While he finished his work, McMahon heard a juror mutter a reference to Papa Mose: “Sambo, Sambo.”
When the defense attorney, C. Sidney Carlton, started his cross-examination, it became clear that he wanted to make this his moment. He tried to pin Papa Mose down on how he could recognize anybody in the dark with the flashlight pointed mostly at him. Carlton tried to get Papa Mose to admit that the only reason he even thought he recognized Milam was because Milam was big and bald and white. And couldn’t that description fit a lot of people? He wondered how Papa Mose could even identify Bryant, ignoring what Papa Mose had said under oath. Bryant had identified himself when he came banging on his door. Oh, that man was getting on Papa Mose’s nerves. In fact, at one point, he became so annoyed that he just stopped saying “sir” when he answered.