by Chris Crowe
When he finished speaking, he stayed in front of the jury, looking again into the eyes of each one. Not a single man tried to avoid his gaze.
Then it was J. J. Breland’s turn. He walked confidently to the jury, smiled, and, while pointing to Bryant and Milam, said, “I’ve known those two boys for years. They’re men of good reputation, respected businessmen in the community, what I’d call real patriots, one hundred percent Americans.
“This trial has been a waste of the state’s time and money. The prosecution talked generalities because the facts just didn’t bear out the guilt of these defendants. Where’s the motive?” he shouted. “Where’s the motive?
“It’s plain and simple that the state has no case, no evidence, no identification, no motive. They claimed that Till’s wolf-whistle at Mrs. Bryant at her store in Money gave my clients enough reason to kill the boy, but both these men have testified to the authorities that they released the boy, unharmed, after his abduction because they determined he was not the one who had done the whistling. In no way did the state link up the dead boy with these defendants.
“Mrs. Bryant’s own testimony did nothing to implicate Till in the incident at her store. She made it clear that Till never had anything to do with her, that she’d never even seen the boy. So why, I ask you, would her husband go out of his way to injure a Negro boy who had committed no offense against him or his family?
“The only testimony that suggested Emmett Till did anything in connection with these defendants was Mose Wright’s testimony that he had heard that the boy had done something. However, any fool knows that if Mose had known Emmett Till was involved in something down there, he would have gotten him out and whipped him himself.
“And how could old Mose Wright tell whether the alleged kidnappers were black or white when he had a flashlight shining directly into his face in a completely dark house? It was so dark that night that Mose couldn’t even determine the make of the abductors’ car. Then he claimed the man identified himself as ‘Mr. Bryant.’ I ask you, how many Mr. Bryants are there in the state of Mississippi? Had any of you gone to Mose Wright’s house with evil intent, would you have given your name? There’s nothing reasonable about the state’s theory. If that’s identification, if that places these men at that scene”—he paused a moment, then shouted each word—“then none of us are safe!
“I wouldn’t put it past the NAACP and other Northern rabble-rousers to plant a body in the Tallahatchie River and claim it was Till. There are people in the United States who want to destroy the way of life of Southern people. The state did not prove the body was Till’s; it couldn’t have been. You heard witnesses, qualified professionals, testify that the body had been in the water two weeks or more, while Till had been missing only three days before that body was found. Believe me, there are people who will commit any crime known to man to widen the gap between the white and colored people of the United States. They would not be above putting a rotting, stinking body in the river in the hope it would be identified as Emmett Till.
“My friends, these cold, calculating groups along with the Northern media are doing everything they can to disrupt this trial, to destroy the South. I am sure that every last Anglo-Saxon of you has the courage to free these men in the face of that pressure. We have got to use our legal system to protect our God-given freedoms. If we do not, we have sinned before God and before our fellow citizens of the great state of Mississippi.” He paused, and then continued with a quieter, even more serious tone.
“If you convict these two men, it would be admitting that freedom is lost forever. I’ll be waiting for you when you come out from your deliberations. If your verdict is guilty, I want you to come to me and tell me where is the land of the free and the home of the brave. I say to you, gentlemen, your forefathers will absolutely turn over in their graves if you don’t set these boys loose.”
When Mr. Breland finally sat down, the judge sent the jury out of the courtroom to decide whether or not Bryant and Milam were guilty. It seemed like a simple case to me. Mr. Breland’s argument was so full of holes that even I could see he didn’t have a leg to stand on. There was no doubt that Bryant and Milam were guilty, and I was sure the jury would see it the same way.
A few people left the courtroom, but Grampa and I stayed in that sweatbox and waited. It had been a long week, and Grampa looked exhausted. When the jury was dismissed, we talked a little, but then he dozed off, and I decided to let him sleep. I figured the jury would be out for quite a while.
But barely an hour later they came back in. When the judge asked them if they had a verdict for Bryant and Milam, the foreman stood up. “Yes, sir.” He cleared his throat and read from a paper he held. “We find the defendants not guilty.”
The words triggered cheering and celebration. Bryant and Milam shook hands and slapped backs with their lawyers; then they turned and kissed their wives. Somebody handed both of them cigars, and Milam lit his up immediately. Now that the trial was over, photographers were free to snap photos, and flashbulbs were going off all over the room. People acted like it was the Fourth of July, and the Korean War had just been declared over.
But in the midst of all that celebrating, I felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me. How could the jury find them innocent? These two men—and others—had murdered a boy, and now their fellow citizens had not only turned them loose but were celebrating. It made me sick, and all I wanted to do was get out of there, out of Mississippi, and back home where things and people weren’t so crazy.
Grampa didn’t cheer and clap like most white people in the courtroom. As soon as the verdict was announced, he slumped forward and rested his head in his hands. He took several deep breaths, and a few minutes later when he sat up, he looked better, almost relieved that the trial was over. Before we turned to leave, Milam, who was swarmed by reporters and friends, turned, looked right at Grampa, grinned, and gave him the thumbs-up sign.
Grampa acted like he hadn’t seen it.
It took a while for the crowd to thin out enough for us to leave the courtroom. When we got to the foyer, an NBC-TV reporter was interviewing Sheriff Strider about the trial. “Is it true,” the reporter asked, “that you’ve been getting hate mail ever since the arrest of Bryant and Milam?”
“I’m glad you asked me this,” said the sheriff as he looked into the camera. “I just want to tell all those people who’ve been sending me threatening letters that if they ever come down here, the same thing’s gonna happen to them that happened to Emmett Till.”
The reporter asked another question, but by then I was too far down the hall to hear what he said. Besides, I didn’t want to hear anything more about this case.
I’d had all I could take.
CHAPTER 16
When we got home that night, Grampa looked awful: His face was washed out, paler than I’d ever seen it. The trial had probably been harder on him than on me, I thought at the time, because he was worried about me testifying in the most spectacular case in the history of Mississippi. Maybe he’d had some threatening letters because of me, letters he’d kept to himself. There’s no telling what some nuts would say to an old man whose grandson might testify on the wrong side of a local murder trial.
When we sat down for supper, Grampa sighed. “I am glad that trial’s over, gladder than I’ve been for anything in a long, long time. Maybe we can finally forget about Emmett Till and that mess up in Money.”
“You think it’s over, Grampa?” I asked. “The trial’s the end of it?”
“It’s over for those two boys, that’s for sure. Once you’re acquitted of a crime, you can’t be tried for it again.”
“But what about the people who helped them?” R. C. Rydell. Would he get away with murder?
“Get that out of your head, Hiram.” Grampa’s voice sounded strong even though he looked like a good sneeze would knock him right out of his chair. “Just you forget about it. The authorities did a thorough investigation, and there wasn’t enough e
vidence to convict Bryant and Milam. If they’d had a good reason to suspect anyone else—including R. C. Rydell—they would have been after them in a hot minute.”
“But the paper said Bryant and Milam weren’t alone that night.”
Grampa slapped the table with his hand. “Dammitall, Hiram, you ought to be smart enough to know newspapers make mistakes. Rumors are always flying around in cases like these, and the lawyers made it clear that those Negro witnesses lacked reliability.”
“But what if Bryant and Milam are covering for somebody else?”
“It’s done, Hiram, and believe you me, nobody around here is going to bring up this ugly mess again. It’s over. Period.”
“What about an appeal? Won’t Mr. Chatham take it to another court? Can’t he keep fighting it, maybe try to go after the other people involved?” I felt bad complaining to Grampa about the trial after all the worrying he’d done about me, but I couldn’t keep quiet about it. “It’s just not right, Bryant and Milam getting turned loose. Everybody in that courtroom knew they were guilty; I still can’t believe that jury said they weren’t.”
Grampa’s pale face turned pink, and he put both hands flat on the table to keep them steady. “Maybe you didn’t know this, son, but in the United States of America, citizens are entitled to a trial by a jury of their peers, and the verdict of the jury stands. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone else in that courtroom thought about Bryant and Milam. The jury heard both arguments, considered the evidence, and concluded that those men were innocent. The case is closed, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. If you want to keep beating on about that trial, go right ahead, but don’t do it around me. It’s what your daddy used to do, wear me out about what he thought was right or wrong. Well, Hiram, sometimes boys don’t know what’s right; sometimes they’ve got to trust their elders. Twelve adult citizens of the state of Mississippi sat in that courtroom for a full week, and they’ve given their informed decision.”
“But what about—?”
“No buts about it, son. You and I aren’t going to talk about this again, and I’d advise you not to talk to anybody around here about it. Our community’s suffered enough; it’s time for things to get back to normal.”
We were mad at each other, so we didn’t talk much for the rest of the meal, and by the time Ruthanne cleared the dishes, I was itching to get out of there.
Grampa didn’t say anything when I told him I was going for a walk.
The humid night air pressed on me worse than ever; sweat trickled down my back before I’d gotten a block away from home.
It was after nine on a Friday night. A few cars passed as I walked to the bridge, some were packed with kids looking for fun on the first night of a weekend, and seeing them made me wonder what my friends in Tempe were doing, what they’d been doing in the weeks I’d been gone. I was ready to go home, ready to leave Greenwood and Grampa’s house, ready to try to patch things up with Dad. About the only thing I’d miss from Greenwood, actually, the only person I’d miss from Greenwood was Naomi.
And I hoped she’d miss me.
I walked down Front Street and cut through the back parking lot of the county courthouse. A few cars were there, probably night-duty police or county jail guards, and except for those, the lot was empty, quiet, and dark. Halfway across, I saw someone, a man it looked like, step out from the shadows behind a Ford sedan parked close to the courthouse’s rear entrance.
He flicked a cigarette to the ground when I got closer, and before I could see who he was, he said, “Hey, sisbaby. Where you headed so late at night?” R. C. Rydell stepped out of the shadows, and in the light from the corner streetlight I could see his face was bruised and swollen; blood was splattered down the front of his T-shirt.
I stopped but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have a knife that I could see.
“Hope you ain’t looking for my little sister,” he said, “’cause I don’t think she’s gonna make your little run-dee-voo anytime soon.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“C’mon, Hiram, you think I’m stupid? What kind of big brother would I be if I didn’t know my kid sister had herself a boyfriend?”
“Where is she, R.C.? What happened?”
“Problems at home. Our old man.” R.C. lit another cigarette, snapped the match at me, and took a long drag. “Pa really was on one tonight. He’s been mean before, but tonight he was crazy, out of control. ‘House’s a damn pigsty! Kids don’t do a damn thing round here! I work all day to keep a roof over our heads and what do I get for it?’ That kind of crap. Naomi knows enough to steer clear of him when he’s been drinkin’ and rantin’, and so do I, usually, but tonight he started in on me for being gone, for quittin’ my job at the dock and goin’ to Jackson.”
“You’ve been in Jackson?”
“No future round here. And believe me, I didn’t mind gettin’ away from Pa. I got me a job in Jackson loadin’ trucks and might start drivin’ one in a year or two. I been down there almost a month already. Anyway, Pa don’t like it, and he kept yellin’, ‘Ya run out on me, boy!’ What he means is that he couldn’t take my wages no more to buy booze. He really tore into me tonight: hollerin’, swearin’, callin’ me all kinds of names. I coulda took it because I knew he was drunk and that after this weekend, I’d be cleared out of here for good, but he pulls out his big old leather belt, starts swingin’ it around, swearin’, comin’ at me.” R.C. was breathing hard now, and even in the shadows, I could see the pain on his face.
“He caught me good a couple times and I just took it. That made him mad, so he throws the belt down and starts with his fists.” R.C.’s voice got faster. “Hittin’ me in the face, kickin’ me, screamin’ like a crazy man. He popped me in the nose—blood gushed all over, it’s probably broke—and that did it. That pulled my trigger, and there was no stoppin’ me.
“I whaled on Pa like I was some kind of machine. Hittin’ him in the face, left, right, left, poundin’ him as hard as I could. He was bleedin’ bad, but I kept at him. That’s when Naomi started screaming. She tried to make me stop, I don’t know, I can’t remember very well, but I think she pulled on my arm or somethin’, and I shoved her outta the way and kept swingin’ at Pa. Pretty soon he went down like a sack of seed, and I started kickin’ him, yellin’ as loud as I could. I swear, Hiram, I felt like all the hate I’d ever had was pourin’ out of me right on to him.
“When he stopped movin’, stopped swearin’, stopped cryin’, I quit, and that’s when I could hear Naomi cryin’ and beggin’ me to leave him alone. She wasn’t mad or nothin’, but awful scared, maybe scared I’d gone crazy too. I tried talkin’ to her, but she was just cryin’ and cryin’, so I grabbed my duffel bag and got out of there, out for good. I ain’t never goin’ back. Never.”
“You just left Naomi there? What’s she going to do?”
“Last I saw her she was bent over Pa, tryin’ to clean him up. I told her to leave him be, he had it comin’, and she knew it. And you know what? It felt good to rip into my old man. The whole time I was poundin’ him, I wanted to kill him. I was honestly trying to beat him to death.” He took a deep, shaky pull on his cigarette. “I don’t know if I managed it or not, but in case I did, I come down here to let the sheriff know.”
“You told the sheriff you beat up your own dad?”
“Sheriff Smith knows all about Pa. He’s known what’s been goin’ on since I was a little kid. Soon as I told him, he said he was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner and told me to get on the late bus to Jackson and never come back. Told me he’d take care of Pa and make sure Naomi’s okay. You know, for a lawman, Sheriff Smith’s all right.”
R.C. looked like he’d been through the fight of his life, lost, and was relieved it was finally over. He smiled weakly. “I’m gonna make it in Jackson, Hiram. Things are gonna be different for me.”
“Are you sure the sheriff’s not doing anything? How do you know he won’t come after you?”
&nb
sp; “If he does, he does.” R.C. shrugged. “I been in trouble with the law before, and I can take it, but like I said, he knows Pa and what’s been goin’ on at home. He said even if I did kill Pa, he’d consider it self-defense or justifiable homicide or something like that.”
“What about all this other stuff?” I asked. “They just had that big trial in Sumner; Bryant and Milam got turned loose.”
“He told me about all that and asked me about that nigger trouble that happened last month. Said somebody’d told him I’d been braggin’ ’bout how I was goin’ to help humble an uppity Northern nigger.” He looked at me with a thin smile. “I wonder who woulda done that.”
I gulped and took a step back, half expecting R.C. to flatten me. But he just kept talking.
“Anyway, I told him that Bryant and Milam did ask me to help ’em that night, but when I went home after talking to you, Pa was drunk again. Yellin’, hittin’, same old stuff. That’s when I decided I had to get out of here, so I grabbed some things, left home, caught the bus to Jackson, and haven’t been back since.”
