Getting Away with Murder

by Chris Crowe

  The body had swollen to almost twice its normal size; the head had been severely beaten, “torture, horrible beating,” said one deputy. One side of the victim’s forehead was crushed, an eye had been gouged out, and the skull had a bullet hole just above the right ear. The neck had been ripped raw by the barbed wire wrapped around it. The beatings and three days in the river had turned the face and head into a monstrous mess of stinking flesh. The remains were so grotesque and mangled that deputies could only determine that it was a young Black male. Closer examination produced the only clear mark ofiden tification on the body: a silver ring with the inscription May 25, 1943, L.T. Mose Wright recognized it as the ring of Louis Till, Emmett’s father, a ring that Emmett had worn.

  After Mose Wright identified the body, Sheriff Strider gave orders to have it “in the ground before sundown,” and Emmett’s remains were sent to a Black funeral home to be prepared for burial while workers began digging the grave.

  The discovery of Emmett’s body triggered a flurry of action. Sheriff Smith added murder to the charges against Bryant and Milam. The Greenwood Commonwealth prepared the headline “Missing Chicago Negro Youth Found in Tallahatchie River” for its afternoon edition. Curtis Jones called Chicago to notify Mrs. Bradley that Tallahatchie County authorities had found Emmett’s body and planned to bury it as soon as possible.

  Her family was with her when Mrs. Bradley received the tragic news, and everyone became hysterical. Though nearly overcome with grief, she knew she had to think clearly and take the right action. She told her relatives that there was no time for crying and immediately started working on getting Emmett’s body shipped home. “It’s something we’ve got to do,” she told them. She contacted A. A. Rainer, their local mortician, and asked him to find a way to have Emmett’s body returned to Chicago. Rainer and several other people began calling Mississippi officials to stop the burial and to have the body put on the next train headed north.

  Emmett’s mother overcome with grief at a Chicago train station after opening the coffin containing her son

  The grave was almost finished when Rainer finally received approval to block the quick burial. A Mississippi relative, Crosby Smith, gave the information to Sheriff Strider, who grudgingly acknowledged the orders to stop the burial and to have the body prepared for interstate shipment. The sheriff agreed to send the body to Illinois on the condition that the casket remained sealed.

  “Thank God for a divine being,” said Mrs. Bradley years later. “I can truthfully say that from the day I knew Emmett was missing, that divine presence moved in ... and it told me, ‘I will lead you; I will guide you. Just obey.’ Every time I got to a crisis, I got that message.

  “We were able to get that body out of Mississippi, and I guess if we stopped and screamed ten minutes the body would have been buried while we were screaming. But that same little voice told me, ‘You do not have time to cry now. You will cry later. The world will cry for Emmett Till. Get the body out of Mississippi.’ And that’s what I did.”

  When the casket arrived at Chicago’s Twelfth Street station, Mrs. Bradley had it opened to make sure it really did contain her son. “When I looked at Emmett,” she said, “I could not believe that it was even something human I was looking at. I was forced to do a bit-by-bit analysis on his entire body to make really sure that that was my son. If there was any way to disclaim that body, I would have sent that body back to Mississippi. But it was without a doubt Emmett.

  “That was my darkest moment, when I realized that that huge box had the remains of my son.”

  A. A. Rainer had arranged for Emmett’s Chicago funeral to take place on Saturday, September 3, but the day before the scheduled event, Mrs. Bradley decided to “Let the people see what they did to my boy,” and requested an open-casket viewing. So many thousands of mourners thronged the viewing that the funeral had to be delayed until the following Tuesday. The Chicago Defender had already been covering the murder case, and it devoted even more intense print and photo coverage to the condition of Emmett Till’s body and the effect it had on the crowds who saw it. Jet, a national weekly news magazine for Blacks, launched the case to national prominence when it published an article about the murder case that included a close-up photo of Emmett’s disfigured head. People across the nation then joined with Blacks in Chicago and Mississippi in their outrage over the brutal murder of the fourteen-year-old boy.

  As a large crowd of family members and supporters watched, Emmett Till was finally laid to rest in Burr Oak Cemetery in Aslip, Illinois, on Tuesday, September 6. On the same day in Mississippi, a grand jury in Tallahatchie County issued what many people considered an unprecedented decision: They indicted two white men for the murder of a Black boy. The indictment read, in part, “Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, and of their malice aforethought did kill and murder Emmett Till, a human being, against the peace and dignity of the State of Mississippi.” The grand jury’s announcement stunned racist Mississipians and amazed Mississippi Blacks.

  Could justice be done in one of the most notoriously racist states in America? Both sides immediately began to gear up for the biggest trial in the history of the state of Mississippi.

  This photograph of Emmett Till in his coffin appeared in the Black newspaper The Chicago Defender

  The historic legal battle would start on Monday, September 19, 1955.

  THE GREENWOOD COMMONWEALTH

  Missing Chicago Negro Youth Found in Tallahatchie River

  August 31, 1955

  The body of a 14-year-old kidnaped Chicago negro boy was found floating in the Tallahatchie River this morning. Discovery of the body was made by a young fisherman named [Hodges], who was inspecting his trot line. The body was in shallow water near the bank, it was reported, and was found at Pecan Point near Phillipp.

  [Robert Hodges] notified Sheriff H. C. Strider at Charleston in Tallahatchie county of his find. He immediately called the sheriff’s office in Greenwood and reported the matter.

  Deputy Sheriff John Edd Cothran and Deputy Sheriff Ed Weber went to the scene and carried Mose Wright, uncle of the youth, along in order to make identification of the body. It was brought back to Greenwood and turned over to the Century Burial Association, local negro undertakers.

  Officers said that the body had been weighted down with a cotton gin pulley tied with barbed wire. There was also a bullet hole in his head.

  Three white men and a woman took the boy from his uncle’s home early Sunday after the boy allegedly made “ugly remarks” to a white woman.

  Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W Milam, have been charged with kidnaping. The sheriff’s office said that an additional charge of murder will be made since the turn of events.

  Sheriff George W. Smith said several days ago after the happening that he was afraid of foul play.

  Young Till allegedly made the ugly remarks to Mrs. Bryant, wife of the storekeeper who faces a kidnaping charge. The youth was visiting his uncle, Mose Wright, a tenant farmer.

  Sheriff Smith said Bryant admitted taking the boy from his uncle’s home but said the youth was released when Mrs. Bryant said he was not the boy who made the remarks to her.

  Sheriff Smith said the investigation showed:

  Young Till and several other negro youths went to the Bryant store in the Money community and Till went in and allegedly made the remarks.

  Early Sunday, a car carrying three men and a woman drove up to Wright’s house. One of the men asked Wright if the boy from Chicago was there. Two men brought the boy out of the house.

  Wright asked where they were taking his nephew. One of the men replied, “Nowhere if he’s not the right one.”

  CHAPTER 5

  SETTING THE STAGE

  The announcement of the murder indictment and the trial date triggered widely publicized reactions from the North and the South.

  Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP, condemned the killing and the killers, calling the murder another
example of white supremacist violence in the South. Civil rights supporters wrote to the governor of Mississippi demanding vigorous prosecution in the case, and the mayor of Chicago called on federal officials to join the investigation. Mrs. Mamie Till Bradley told reporters in Chicago that she was going to seek legal assistance to support the prosecution of the killers and that “Mississippi is going to pay for this.” Southern newspapers reported only the latter part of her statement, making it look like Emmett’s mother blamed the entire state of Mississippi for her son’s murder. In a television interview just before the trial, Mrs. Bradley also demanded support from President Eisenhower: “It’s my opinion that the guilt begins with Mrs. Bryant, and I want to see Mrs. Bryant, her husband, and any other persons that were in on this thing. And I feel like the pressure should start with the president of the United States and be channeled all the way down to the township of Money, Mississippi.”

  In Mississippi, Sheriffs Smith and Strider received letters and phone calls threatening them and Bryant and Milam; as a precaution, Smith called on National Guard troops to patrol the Leflore County jail. Strider reported rumors that thousands of Blacks were on their way to Mississippi to “tear up the jail and take the two men,” but the threats didn’t worry the Southern sheriff. He told The Greenwood Commonwealth, “These folks seem to think they are coming down here to take over—I don’t think they are.”

  Robert Patterson, founder of the White Citizens’ Council, said the Emmett Till murder couldn’t be blamed on the Councils or any other segregationist group. “One of the primary reasons for our organization,” he said, “is to prevent acts of violence. We are doing our best in spite of constant agitation and inflammatory statements from the NAACP and outside agitators.” Defending his state against these outside agitators, Mississippi’s governor, Hugh White, sent a telegram to the NAACP with this message: “Parties charged with the murder are in jail. I have every reason to believe that the court will do their duty in prosecution. Mississippi does not condone such conduct.”

  Before the widespread condemnation of Mississippi, local authorities looked forward to prosecuting the two brothers for Emmett’s murder, and the sheriffs’ offices in Leflore and Tallahatchie counties had been gathering evidence for the prosecution. Despite the state’s violent racist culture, the vicious murder horrified many white residents, and they supported a conviction of Bryant and Milam. Neither of the killers was well liked in the community, and many people felt the brothers had overstepped their “white” authority in kidnapping and killing the boy. Initial public reaction in the Delta was so negative that no lawyer in the county would agree to defend the two men.

  But the deluge of phone calls, letters, and telegrams from “outside agitators” and the loud criticism from Northern media put the local Mississippians, already on edge because of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, on the defensive. The hostile reaction against Mississippi convinced many white citizens that Southern culture was in danger, and they were determined to preserve their way of life at all costs. So, even though most white residents loathed siding with two unpopular “rednecks,” on the weekend of September 3, 1955, public opinion in Leflore and Tallahatchie counties turned in favor of Bryant and Milam.

  Sheriff Strider began a public defense of the killers when he announced to the press that he thought the body found in the Tallahatchie was much too old to be Emmett Till’s and suggested that the boy was still alive. Strider later admitted privately, “The last thing I wanted to do was to defend those peckerwoods. But I just had no choice about it.” That same weekend other county leaders also had a change of heart, and all five lawyers in the town of Sumner—J. J. Breland, C. Sidney Carlton, Harvey Henderson, J. W. Kellum, and John Whitten—agreed to take Bryant and Milam’s case. Breland defended their decision by explaining that the lawyers felt the local murder case had turned into a media event pitting Mississippi and its way of life against outside agitators bent on destroying the South. He said they all felt intense pressure to “let the North know that we are not going to put up with Northern negroes ‘stepping over the line.’”

  An article in The Greenwood Commonwealth reported a similar response among the white residents of Leflore and Tallahatchie counties:“The attitude of Sumner citizens seemed to be that the indictments were expected, but citizens also resented charges and influence of outside organizations, especially the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

  During a break in the trial, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant talk with their mother. At right is Carolyn Bryant.

  “Vernon Brett, Sumner wholesale groceryman, said ‘justice should be done, but we resent the outside interference from northern negroes who don’t know the facts.’

  “C. Sidney Carlton, a defense attorney for Bryant and Milam, said, ‘the people of this area all regret that this awful thing happened. We don’t condone such actions, but the people here are not convinced that the boys (Bryant and Milam) killed the negro boy.’”

  In the Delta Democrat- Times, editor Hodding Carter wrote that he believed that some groups outside Mississippi were using the Till case as an opportunity to make the state look bad. In an editorial published before the trial, he warned that the intense negative reactions from groups in the North might make it impossible for any white juror to issue a fair and honest decision.

  “[Northern agitators] could make the prospective Mississippi jurors so angry at these blanket indictments of our white society that it would seem a confirmation to convict any member of it, no matter how anti-social he or she might be. Then the purpose would have been accomplished and Mississippi could go down in further ignominy as a snakepit where justice cannot prevail for each race alike.”

  As a lifelong Southerner, Carter anticipated the reaction of the jury members to the pressures from the North and the South and lamented the inevitable fallout that would come if the murder trial weren’t run honestly. “If the courts in Mississippi are unable to accomplish justice in this matter,” he said, “we will deserve the criticism we get.”

  The defense lawyers weren’t worried about Northern criticism; they simply wanted their clients declared innocent. A victory in this case, they assumed, would be more than enough to silence the rabble-rousers from the North. And victory was assured even before the trial began because Bryant and Milam’s attorneys knew they could rely on the racist beliefs of their fellow white citizens to win an acquittal in the case. The defense team simply had to provide the jury members with an easy out, a legal reason to declare the killers innocent of the murder charges and still save face in their community.

  Lead defense attorney J. J. Breland went public with the defense’s strategy, and by doing so made available to all potential jurors a way for them to vote against a conviction of Bryant and Milam: “The way I see it,” Breland told The Greenwood Commonwealth, “the state has got to prove three things: 1. That the boy was murdered. 2. That it happened in the second judicial district of Tallahatchie County. 3. That Bryant and Milam did it. It’s all circumstantial, which is okay when you’re returning an indictment but quite different when you’ve got to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  Then Breland did some public relations work to rebuild the image of the two “peckerwoods” he had agreed to defend. He said that he’d known his clients for several years, and that they were “men of good reputation, respected businessmen in the community, what I’d call real patriots, 100 percent Americans.”

  The pretrial publicity from Breland and Sheriff Strider and the increasingly hostile attacks from Northern and liberal media would send members of the jury into the trial with their minds made up. Like most Mississippi whites, they already believed they had to defend Southern society against “radicals” and “agitators” determined to force integration on their state. If jurors needed further reasons to acquit Bryant and Milam, they only had to recall Breland’s preview of the defense’s trial strategy, his certification of Bryant and Milam as “patriots,” and Sheriff Str
ider’s rumor that Emmett Till was still alive. That would give any white who served on the jury enough “evidence” to render a decision that would defend the South.

  To its credit, the state did what it could to set up a fair trial by appointing one of Mississippi’s leading prosecutors, District Attorney Gerald Chatham, to handle the trial, and by assigning Mississippi Assistant Attorney General Robert B. Smith, a former FBI agent, to assist Chatham in the case. The governor also assigned two additional attorneys and two Highway Patrol inspectors to help in the investigation. Circuit Judge Curtis M. Swango, widely respected for his fairness, presided at the trial that, by his order, would begin on Monday, September 19.

  The site of the famous trial was the Tallahatchie County courthouse, a sturdy pre-World War I stone building that occupied the center of the town square of Sumner, Mississippi, population 550. On the morning of September 19, throngs of people, Black and white, Northerner and Southerner, jammed the square, waiting for the trial to begin. More than seventy photographers and newspaper, radio, and television reporters from all over the United States were among the crowd.

  Sheriff Strider reminded Northern reporters that the courtroom was segregated, just like every other public building in the state. “We’ve kept the races separated for a long time,” he said, “and we don’t intend to change now.” When the county building opened its doors for the trial, more than 250 whites were allowed to file upstairs to the second-floor courtroom. After the whites had their seats, deputies let about fifty Black spectators enter and sit in the back of the court, and despite the protests of Sheriff Strider, Judge Swango permitted eight Black reporters to be seated at a card table set up in the rear of the courtroom. In the front of the courtroom facing the judge’s stand, Bryant and Milam sat at a table with their lawyers. The defendants’ wives and mother sat behind them. Each defendant had two young sons, and the four little boys split time between their mothers’ laps and their fathers‘.