When I think of the men and women who spurred on the civil rights movement, I don’t always go right to Martin Luther King jr or Rosa Parks. A lot of times I think of a 14-year-old kid, who had his entire life ahead of him, but instead of getting to live that precious life, his life was taken from him. And he unintentionally became one of the most famous names synonymous with the civil rights movement. I am speaking of course about Emmett Till and how this young boy became a catalyst for change. I’m John Dodson, welcome to The Secret Sits.
In 1941, Mamie and Louis Till saw the birth of their son Emmett, while living in Chicago. Mamie was originally from the small Delta town of Webb, Mississippi. When she was two years old, her family relocated to Argo, Illinois, participating in what is now known as the Great Migration. When rural black families from the south, moved to more northern states to leave behind the violence, the lack of opportunities and the unequal and unethical treatment of people of color who lived in the south. Argo, Illinois ended up receiving so many of these migrating black families that it soon earned the nickname Little Mississippi.
In the 1950s Mississippi was the poorest state in the United States of America. The average income for a white household was $690 and for a black household that number dropped to $462. Economic opportunities for blacks were almost nonexistent. In fact, most were sharecroppers who lived on land owned by white people. The black population had been disenfranchised and every time they seemed to gain an inch others would take back a mile. New ordinances were passed establishing racial segregation and the new Jim Crow laws were put into place.
Mamie largely raised Emmett with her mother; she and Louis Till separated in 1942 after she discovered that he had been unfaithful. Louis later abused her, choking her to unconsciousness, to which she responded by throwing scalding water at him. For violating court orders to stay away from Mamie, Louis Till was forced by a judge in 1943 to choose between jail or enlisting in the U.S. Army. In 1945, a few weeks before his son's fourth birthday, he was executed for the murder of an Italian woman, and the rape of two others.
When Emmett was six years old, he contracted polio. The after affect was a persistent stutter. Mamie and Emmett then moved to Detroit, where she met and married “Pink” Bradley in 1951. Emmett much preferred his life back in Chicago, so he moved back there to live with his grandmother, only a short while later, by the end of that same year, Emmett’s mother and new stepfather also moved to Chicago. But this marriage did not last and Mamie and Pink separated in 1952, shortly after, Pink moved back to Detroit.
Mamie Till Bradley and Emmett lived together in a busy neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, near distant relatives. She began working as a civilian clerk for the U.S. Air Force for a better salary. She recalled that Emmett was industrious enough to help with chores at home, although he sometimes got distracted. She remembered that he did not know his own limitations at times. Following the couple's separation, Pink visited Mamie and began making threats against her. At eleven years old, Emmett, with a butcher knife in hand, told Pink Bradley he would kill him if the man did not leave. Usually, however, Emmett was just a happy go lucky kid. He and his cousins and friends pulled pranks on each other and they also spent their free time playing pickup baseball games. Emmett was known to be a nice dresser and was often the center of attention among his friends and classmates. By 1955, Emmett was stocky and muscular, weighed about 150 pounds and stood 5 feet 4 inches tall.
In 1955, Mamie’s uncle, 64-year-old Mose Wright, visited her and Emmett in Chicago during the summer and told Emmett stories about living in the Mississippi Delta. Emmett wanted to see for himself. Mamie was ready for a vacation and planned to take Emmett with her on a trip to visit relatives in Nebraska, but after he begged her to let him visit Wright instead, she relented.
Emmett would travel accompanied by his great uncle Mose Wright. Now Emmett had never even visited the rural south before, so before he departed his mother sat him down for a talk. Mamie explained that Chicago and Mississippi where two completely different worlds. She explained how he was expected to act around white people while he was in the south, Emmett assured his mother that he understood.
Statistics on lynchings started being collected in 1882. And I want to take a moment to clarify what a lynching is, just in case some of our listeners from other countries are not familiar with the term. A lynching is when, typically a mob of people, but it could be one person, kills another human being, most often by hanging, because they have allegedly caused an offense, with or without a legal trial. Since 1882, more than 500 African Americans have been killed by extrajudicial violence in Mississippi alone, and more than 3,000 across the South. Most of the incidents took place between 1876 and 1930 and though far less common by the mid-1950s, these racially motivated murders still occurred. Throughout the South, whites publicly prohibited interracial relationships as a means to maintain white supremacy. Even the suggestion of sexual contact between black men and white women could carry severe penalties for black men. A resurgence of the enforcement of such Jim Crow laws was evident following World War II, when African-American veterans started pressing for equal rights in the South.
Racial tensions increased after the United States Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education to end segregation in public education, which it ruled as unconstitutional. Many segregationists believed the ruling would lead to interracial dating and marriage. Whites strongly resisted the court's ruling; one Virginia county even closed all its public schools just to prevent integration.
Emmett Till arrived in Money, Mississippi on August 21st 1955. Three days later, he and his cousin Curtis Jones skipped church services, where his great uncle Mose was preaching and they joined some of the local boys as they went to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market to by some candy.
The Grocery store was owned by a white couple, 24-year-old Roy Bryant and his 21-year-old wife Carolyn. Carolyn was working the front of the store, completely on her own this day but her sister-in-law was in the back of the store watching some children. Emmett’s cousin Curtis left Emmett in the store and wondered across the street to join some other local boys who were playing checkers.
This is the part of our story, where not every detail can be verified, so there are a couple of different versions of what took place next. Curtis Jones, at the time, said that the other boys in the store with Emmett said that he had a photo of his integrated school class from Chicago and Emmett was bragging that he was friends with even the white kids in the photo. He pointed out to them, a white girl in the photo and he claimed that she was his girlfriend. Because of Emmett’s boasting, one of the local boys dared him to speak to Carolyn Bryant.
However, Emmett’s other cousin who was in the store, Simeon Wright, disputed Curtis’ version of events in his book which was released in 2009. According to Wright’s account, Emmett did not have a photo of a white girl in his wallet and no one dared him to speak to Carolyn Bryant. Speaking in 2015, Wright said: "We didn't dare him to go to the store – the white folk said that. They said that he had pictures of his white girlfriend. There were no pictures. They never talked to me. They never interviewed me." The FBI report completed in 2006 notes "... [Curtis] Jones recanted his 1955 statements prior to his death and apologized to Mamie Till-Mobley".
Other versions of the story, some from kids outside of the store, stated that Emmett may have wolf-whistled at Bryant. Simeon Wright, who was with him in the store said that Emmett had whistled at Bryant, saying, "I think [Emmett] wanted to get a laugh out of us or something", adding, "He was always joking around, and it was hard to tell when he was serious." Wright stated that following the whistle he became immediately alarmed, saying, "Well, it scared us half to death" and "You know, we were almost in shock. We couldn't get out of there fast enough, because we had never heard of anything like that before. A black boy whistling at a white woman? In Mississippi? No." Wright went on "The Ku Klux Klan and night riders were part of our daily lives". Following his disappearance, a newspaper account stated that Emmett sometimes whistled to alleviate his stuttering. His speech was sometimes unclear; his mother said he had particular difficulty with pronouncing "b" sounds, and he may have whistled to overcome problems asking for bubble gum. She said that, to help with his articulation, she taught Emmett how to whistle softly to himself before pronouncing his words.
The account of the interaction told by Carolyn Bryant at trial was that she had been restocking candy on a shelf and Emmett had grabbed her by her hand and said, “How about a date, baby?” She then freed herself from his grasp and she walked to the register. Emmett followed her and grabbed her by the waist and said, “What’s the matter baby, can’t you take it?” She then freed herself from his grasp again and he said, “You needn’t be afraid of me, baby. I’ve been with white women before.” She then stated that one of Emmett’s companions came into the store, grabbed him by the arm and ordered him to leave.
According to historian Timothy Tyson, Bryant admitted to him in a 2008 interview that her testimony during the trial that Emmett Till had made verbal and physical advances was false. Bryant had testified Emmett grabbed her waist and uttered obscenities but later told Tyson “That part's not true". As for the rest of what happened, the 72-year-old stated she could not remember. The most convenient phrase ever uttered. Bryant is quoted by Tyson as saying "Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him". However, the tape recordings that Tyson made of the interviews with Bryant do not contain Bryant saying those things. In addition, the woman with Bryant at the interviews, her daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, says that Bryant never told Tyson that.
Decades later, Emmett's cousin Simeon Wright also challenged the account given by Carolyn Bryant at the trial. Wright entered the store "less than a minute" after Till was left inside alone with Bryant, and he saw no inappropriate behavior and heard "no lecherous conversation". Wright said Emmett "paid for his items and we left the store together". In their 2006 investigation of the cold case, the FBI noted that a second anonymous source, who was confirmed to have been in the store at the same time as Emmett and his cousin, supported Wright's account.
In any event, however or whatever transpired in the store, after Emmett left the store, Carolyn Bryant went outside to retrieve a pistol from underneath the seat of a car. The teenagers saw her do this and left immediately. It was acknowledged that Emmett whistled while Bryant was going to her car. However, it is disputed whether he whistled toward Bryant or toward a checkers game that was occurring just across the street.
One of the other boys ran across the street to tell Curtis Jones what happened in the store. When the older man with whom Jones was playing checkers heard the story, he urged the boys to leave quickly, fearing violence. Bryant told others of the events at the store, and the story spread quickly. Curtis and Emmett declined to tell his great-uncle Mose Wright, fearing they would get in trouble. Emmett said he was ready to return home to Chicago. Carolyn's husband Roy Bryant was on an extended trip hauling shrimp to Texas and did not return home until August 27. Historian Timothy Tyson said an investigation by civil rights activists concluded Carolyn Bryant did not initially tell her husband Roy Bryant about the encounter with the boy, and that Roy was told by a person who hung around down at their store. Roy was reportedly angry at his wife for not telling him. Carolyn Bryant told the FBI she didn't tell her husband because she feared he would beat up the boy.
When Carolyn Bryant’s husband Roy was told what had happened, he began to aggressively question several random black men who entered the store. Later that evening Roy, along with a black man named J. W. Washington approached a black teenage boy walking along the road. Roy ordered Washington to grab the boy and throw him into the back of his pickup truck. They then drove the boy to a friend of Carolyn’s who had witnessed the episode in the store with Emmett Till. This random boy who had been grabbed was confirmed not to be the boy from the store, but in the process of this, Roy gained new details about who Emmett was. He learned that the boy in question was from Chicago and that he was staying with Mose Wright. Several witnesses also overheard Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. W. Milam, discussing kidnapping Emmett Till from Wright’s house.
At approximately 2:30 in the morning on August 28th, 1955, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam drove to Mose Wrights home. Milam was armed with a pistol and a flashlight. He asked Mose if he had 3 boys staying with him from Chicago. Milam told Preacher Mose Wright to take him to the boy who did the talking. Emmett’s great-aunt begged the men and even offered them money, but Milam refused these offers and just rushed Emmett to get dressed. Mose tried to explain to the men that Emmett was from up north and he just did not know any better.
Milam then turned to Mose and said, “How old are you preacher?” the man responded with “64” and Milan informed him that if he told anybody in town about this, he would not live to see 65. The two men then took Emmett out to their truck. As they reached the dark area where the vehicle was parked, the preacher heard the men ask someone if this was the boy, to which a voice in the dark said yes. When asked later if he could identify the voice, he simply said that it seemed like a lighter voice than a man’s.
The two men tied Emmett up in the back of their green pickup truck and drove on toward Money, Mississippi. Allegedly, they drove back to Bryant’s Groceries and recruited two black men to help them. They drove out to a barn in Drew. Along the way Emmett was pistol-whipped until he was knocked unconscious.
One actual eye witness to the goings on of this terrible night was Willie Reed. At the time he was 18-years-old and he had seen the truck passing by him. He recalled that he saw two white men in the front and two black men in the back of the truck. While Willie was walking home, he could hear the tortured sounds of young Emmett Till being beaten inside of the barn. Willie proceeded to inform one of his neighboring friends and they both snuck to the water well close to the barn. Here they were approached by Milam, who asked the boys if they had heard anything, to which they quickly responded no.
Later that morning, others also passed the barn and heard yelling. One local neighbor saw a man named Leroy Collins behind the barn washing what appeared to be blood off of the truck, he also noticed Emmett’s boot. Milam explained away the situation by explaining that he had shot a deer and the boot belonged to him.
Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam claimed that their plan was as follows, they intended to beat Emmett Till and then throw him off of an embankment into the river as a way to frighten the boy. As they proceeded with this plan, they claim that, while beating him, Till began yelling at them and calling them bastards, he declared that he was just as good as they were, and he boasted that he had, had sex with white women. You know, the normal points of conversation when two to four grown men are beating you to death.
So, they placed Emmett back into the back of the truck and drove down to the cotton gin and stole a 70-pound fan. They would later admit that this was the only time during this incident which worried them, because they did not want to be accused of stealing. They proceeded to drive for several more miles along the river, looking for a place to dispose of the troublesome out of towner. The men ultimately shot young Emmett Till and then used the 70-pound fan to weight down his body in the river.
Preacher man Mose Wright sat on his front porch in the dark of the morning, waiting in vain for the return of his great-nephew. But after about twenty minutes of waiting in uncertainty, he and another man drove into Money, purchased some gasoline and started driving around trying to find Emmett. After a while, and not finding any sign of the boy, they returned home around 8:00am. Curtis Jones asked his great-uncle if he had called the police, and of course, out of fear for his own life, he had not. So, Curtis placed a call to the Leflore County Sheriff and then another call to his own mother who lived in Chicago. Distraught, Curtis’ mother then called Emmett’s mother Mamie.
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were questioned by the Leflore County Sheriff, George Smith. They simply admitted that, yes, they had taken Emmett Till from his great-uncle’s yard, the two men then claimed that they had released him right in front of the Bryant’s Grocery store. The two men were arrested for kidnapping.
Word started to spread that Emmett was missing and soon Medgar Evers showed up. Medgar Evers at this time was a well-known civil rights activist in Mississippi. He was the Mississippi state secretary for the NAACP. Amzie Moore, head of the Bolivar County chapter of the NAACP also arrived with Evers and the two imbedded themselves with the local sharecroppers and went out into the cotton fields to gather information in secret in an attempt to try and find the missing Till boy.
On August 31st two boys were fishing in the Tallahatchie River, when they discovered the swollen and disfigured body of a boy. Mose Wright was called down to the river to try and identify the body that had been found. The head was extremely mutilated, there was a gunshot through the head just above the right ear, and one eye was dislodged from it’s socket. The victim had clearly been beaten across his back and the body had been tied to a large fan blade using barbed wire twisted around the blade and the boy’s neck. The boy was completely nude except for a silver ring with the inscription “May 25th 1943” carved in it and the initials L.T. The face was unrecognizable, even to his own family member, because of the trauma and the added disfigurement from being submerged in the water. But Mose Wright identified his great-nephew and the silver ring was removed and given to Wright, he would later turn the ring over to the district attorney as evidence.
Now lynchings and racially motivated murders had taken place for decades, but something about the circumstances surrounding Emmett Till’s murder acted like a catalyst and it attracted national attention. This was a 14-year-old child, who had been viciously murdered, simply for breaching a social caste system. This murder gave a new rise to the people’s feelings around segregation, support of the black community by law enforcement, social relations between the northern and southern states and activities of the NAACP.
Shortly after Emmett Till had gone missing a three-paragraph story was printed in the Greenwood Commonwealth and then the story was picked up by other Mississippi newspapers. When the body was located, these newspapers then ran stories about his murder. The Jackson Daily News and the Visksburg Evening Post ran a photo of Emmett Till and his mother from the previous Christmas, sitting together smiling and the stories accompany the photo expressed shame towards the people who had perpetrated his murder. One passage read, “Now is the time for every citizen who loves the state of Mississippi to Stand up and be counted before hoodlum white trash brings us to destruction.” It continued to state that “Negroes were not the downfall of Mississippi society, but whites like those in the White Citizens’ Councils that condoned this type of violence.”
No doctor performed a post-mortem autopsy on Till’s body. Emmett’s body was clothed, packed in lime, and placed into a pine coffin for immediate burial. Mamie Till Bradley, Emmett’s mother was still in Chicago and so she demanded that her son’s body be brought to her there, she had to contact several local and state authorities in Illinois and Mississippi to make sure her son was being sent back home to her.
The governor of Mississippi, at the time, Hugh L. White deplored the murder, and encouraged local authorities to vigorously prosecute the men responsible. He sent telegrams directly to the NAACP, promising a full investigation into the murder. Residents in the Delta area, both black and white, attempted to distance themselves from the Till murder. And the Leflore County Deputy Sheriff John Cothran stated, “The white people around here feel pretty mad about the way that poor little boy was treated, and they won’t stand for this.”
Soon, however, discourse about Till's murder became more complex. Robert B. Patterson, executive secretary of the segregationist White Citizens' Council, used Till's death to claim that racial segregation policies were to provide for blacks' safety and that their efforts were being neutralized by the NAACP. In response, NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins characterized the incident as a lynching and said that Mississippi was trying to maintain white supremacy through murder. He said, "there is in the entire state no restraining influence of decency, not in the state capital, among the daily newspapers, the clergy, nor any segment of the so-called better citizens." Mamie Till Bradley told a reporter that she would seek legal aid to help law enforcement find her son's killers and that the State of Mississippi should share the financial responsibility. She is sometimes misquoted as saying "Mississippi is going to pay for this."
Emmett’s body arrived at the A.A. Rayner Funeral Home in Chicago. Mamie, insisted on viewing the body and making a positive identification. It was said that the rancid smell from the body could be smelled from two blocks away. In an act of defiance, Mamie decided to have an open-casket funeral stating, “There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see.” And the world did see, tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Chicago, waiting their turn to view the body, and also to see how much hatred there still was on this earth.
Photographs of Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse circulated around the country, appearing in Jet magazine and The Chicago Defender, which were both black owned publications. One photo showed Mamie over her son’s unrecognizable body as a line of mourners file by, Time magazine will later include this photo in its list of the 100 most influential images of all time. And I have to say, Mamie was a smart woman, who knew exactly what she was doing by having this open-casket funeral. Because of her determination, she was able to expose what the results of a lynching really looked like and no one could hide, the savageness and cruelness of this crime was out there for the entire world to see.
Emmett Till was buried on September 6 in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.
Almost immediately, Mississippi newspapers changed their tone on this case. They started printing outlandish and false stories of riots breaking out in the Chicago funeral home. They published photos of the murders Bryant and Milam, smiling and wearing military uniforms and the stories always spoke of Carolyn Bryant’s beauty and virtue.
This particular area of Mississippi was plagued with a strong case of xenophobia, resulting in the white population rejecting any type of influence which came from the north. This xenophobic attitude was so profound according to one former sheriff that Tallahatchie County was nicknamed “The Freestate of Tallahatchie”, because people there, did as they damn well pleased.
Tallahatchie County Sheriff Clarence Strider, who initially positively identified Till's body and stated that the case against Milam and Bryant was "pretty good", on September 3 announced his doubts that the body pulled from the Tallahatchie River was that of Till. He speculated that the boy was probably still alive. Strider suggested that the recovered body had been planted by the NAACP: a corpse stolen by T. R. M. Howard, who colluded to place Till's ring on it. Strider changed his account after comments were published in the press denigrating the people of Mississippi, later saying: "The last thing I wanted to do was to defend those peckerwoods. But I just had no choice about it."
Bryant and Milam were indicted for murder. The state's prosecuting attorney, Hamilton Caldwell, was not confident that he could get a conviction in a case of white violence against a black male accused of insulting a white woman. A local black paper was surprised at the indictment and praised the decision, as did the New York Times. The high-profile comments published in Northern newspapers and by the NAACP were of concern to the prosecuting attorney, Gerald Chatham; he worried that his office would not be able to secure a guilty verdict, despite the compelling evidence. Having limited funds, Bryant and Milam initially had difficulty finding attorneys to represent them, but five attorneys at a Sumner law firm offered their services pro bono. Their supporters placed collection jars in stores and other public places in the Delta, eventually gathering $10,000 for their defense.
Honestly, there was no way that this was going to be a fair trial, but that is important to talk about as well. Because, in the deep corruption of this trial is where secrets were held.
The Sumner County courthouse is located in the western seat of Tallahatchie County and this is where the trail would be held. Reporters came from coast to coast, covering the trial. David Halberstam called the trial, “the first great media event of the civil rights movement.” Another reporter remarked that this was the most publicity for any trial he had ever seen. There were no hotels in the town, open to black visitors. So many stayed in a compound style area at T.R.M. Howard’s home surrounded by armed guards, for their protection.
The day before the start of the trial, a young black man named Frank Young arrived to tell Howard he knew of two witnesses to the crime. Levi "Too Tight" Collins and Henry Lee Loggins were black employees of Leslie Milam, J. W.'s brother, in whose barn Emmett Till was beaten. The prosecution team was unaware of Collins and Loggins. Sheriff Strider, however, arrested them and booked them into the Charleston, Mississippi, jail as a way to keep them from testifying.
The trial lasted 5 days, the courthouse was filled to capacity with 280 spectators there for the trial. Black attendees sat in the segregated sections of the courtroom. Even the black press was made to sit in the segregated section, rather than the press section with all of the white press agents. Black visitors from northern states were almost shocked at the informality of the court proceedings, jury members were allowed to drink beer during the trial and many of the white, male spectators where open carrying firearms right there in court.
The defense team relied on the idea that the body pulled from the river was not Emmett Till. That the body had never been positively identified and questioned whether Emmett Till was dead at all. They also claimed that Mose Wright could not identify the men on trial as the men who had even taken Emmett from his home that night.
But when Mose Wright testified, he stated that Milam and Bryant had identified themselves to him the evening they took Emmett from his home and that he had seen Milam very clearly. This testimony was considered by most as incredibly courageous, because most black men who openly testified to the guilt of a white man, would not live much longer. One reporter who covered the trial for the New Orleans Times said it was "the most dramatic thing I saw in my career".
Mamie Till Bradley testified about how she had instructed her son to act while in Mississippi, and also that she had told him, should a situation ever arise when a person told him to get on his knees and ask forgiveness of a white person, his should do it without a thought. The defense team questioned her identification of her son and questioned her about a $400 life insurance policy she had taken out on Emmett.
As the trial progressed, the Leflore County Sheriff George Smith, along with several black and white reporters searched for Collins and Loggins. But remember Sheriff Strider had them hidden away in his jail cells. So in their search for the two missing witnesses, they found three additional witnesses who had seen Collins and Loggins with Milam and Bryant on Milam’s property. Two of these new witnesses testified that they had heard the beating and cries on the night Emmett Till was murdered. One boy spoke so quietly on the stand that the judge ordered him several times to speak up. Carolyn Bryant was allowed to testify, but not in front of the jury, as the prosecution objected to the relevance of her testimony. She was not present for any of the kidnapping nor the murder. It is suspected that her testimony was leaked to the jury either way. Then sneaky Sheriff Strider testified for the defense team, stating his alternate theory that Emmett Till was still alive and claiming that the body pulled from the river had been white. The defense team called a doctor from Greenwood who stated that the body was too decomposed to identify, and therefore had been in the water too long to be that of Tills.
In the prosecution’s summation, they claimed that, maybe Emmett Till’s actions where wrong, but that they warranted a spanking, not to be murdered. He then called for justice from the jury and mocked the false narrative put forth by the sheriff and doctor for the defense.
In turn, the defense’s summation said that the events on the night Emmett Till was supposedly murdered where all together improbable. And they said that the jury’s forefathers would turn over in their graves if they convicted Bryant and Milam.
On September 23rd the all-white, all-male jury acquitted both men after only 67 minutes of deliberation; one juror said, “if we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.”
One juror voted twice to convict, but on the third discussion, voted with the rest of the jury to acquit. In later interviews, the jurors acknowledged that they knew Bryant and Milam were guilty, but simply did not believe that life imprisonment or the death penalty were a fitting punishment for whites who had killed a black man. However, two jurors said as late as 2005 that they did believe the defense's case. They also said that the prosecution had not proved that Till had died, nor that it was his body that was removed from the river.
In November 1955, a grand jury declined to indict Bryant and Milam for kidnapping, despite their own admissions of having taken Till. Mose Wright and a young man named Willie Reed, who testified to seeing Milam enter the shed from which screams and blows were heard, both testified in front of the grand jury. After the trial, T. R. M. Howard paid the costs of relocating to Chicago for Wright, Reed, and another black witness who testified against Milam and Bryant, in order to protect the three witnesses from reprisals for having testified. Reed, who later changed his name to Willie Louis to avoid being found, continued to live in the Chicago area until his death on July 18, 2013. He avoided publicity and even kept his history secret from his wife until she was told by a relative. Reed began to speak publicly about the case in the PBS documentary The Murder of Emmett Till, aired in 2003.
Newspapers in major international cities reported outrage about the verdict and expressed strong criticism of American society. Southern newspapers, principally in Mississippi, wrote that the court system had simply done its job. The Emmett Till story continued to make the news for weeks following the trial, sparking debates in newspapers, among the NAACP and various high-profile segregationists about what was justice for blacks and what they viewed as the decency of the Jim Crow society.
In October 1955, the Jackson Daily News reported newly found facts about Emmett Till's birth father that had been suppressed by the U.S. military. While serving in Italy, Louis Till raped two women and killed a third. He was court-martialed and executed by hanging under the direction of the United States Army near Pisa, Italy in July of 1945. Mamie Till Bradley and her family knew none of this information, having simply been told only that Louis had been killed for "willful misconduct".
Protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam struck a deal with Look magazine in 1956 to tell their story to journalist William Bradford Huie for between $3,600 and $4,000. The interview took place in the law firm of the attorneys who had defended Bryant and Milam. Huie did not ask the questions; Bryant and Milam's own attorneys did. Neither attorney had heard their clients' accounts of the murder before. According to Huie, the older Milam was more articulate and surer of himself than the younger Bryant. Milam admitted to shooting Till and neither of them believed they were guilty or that they had done anything wrong.
Reaction to Huie's interview with Bryant and Milam was explosive. Their brazen admission that they had murdered Till caused prominent civil rights leaders to push the federal government harder to investigate the case. Till's murder contributed to congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957: it authorized the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in local law enforcement issues when individual civil rights were being compromised. Huie's interview, in which Milam and Bryant said they had acted alone, overshadowed inconsistencies in earlier versions of the stories. As a consequence, details about others who had possibly been involved in Till's abduction and murder, or the subsequent cover-up, were forgotten.
Till's murder increased fears in the local black community that they would be subjected to violence and the law would not protect them. There was an overwhelming feeling that whites could do anything to the black community and get away with it.
Then Bryant and Milam began to reap what they had sewn. After admitted to Huie that they had killed Till, the support base of the two men eroded in Mississippi. Most of their former friends and supporters, including those who had contributed to their defense funds, cut them off. Blacks boycotted their shops, which caused them to go bankrupt and close, and banks refused to grant them loans to plant crops. After struggling to secure a loan and find someone who would rent to him, Milam managed to secure 217 acres and a $4,000 loan to plant cotton, but blacks refused to work for him. He was forced to pay whites higher wages to do the same work. Eventually, Milam and Bryant relocated to Texas, but their infamy followed them; they continued to generate animosity from locals. In 1961, while in Texas, when Bryant recognized the license plate of a Tallahatchie County resident, he called out a greeting and identified himself. The resident, upon hearing the name, drove away without speaking to Bryant. After several years, they returned to Mississippi. Milam found work as a heavy equipment operator, but ill health forced him into retirement. Over the years, Milam was arrested and tried for offenses such as assault and battery, writing bad checks, and using a stolen credit card. He died of spinal cancer on December 30, 1980, at the age of 61.
Bryant worked as a welder while in Texas, until increasing blindness forced him to give up this employment. At some point, he and Carolyn divorced; he remarried in 1980. He opened a store in Ruleville, Mississippi. He was convicted in 1984 and 1988 of food stamp fraud. In a 1985 interview, he denied killing Till despite having admitted to it in 1956, but said: "if Emmett Till hadn't got out of line, it probably wouldn't have happened to him." Fearing economic boycotts and retaliation, Bryant lived a private life and refused to be photographed or reveal the exact location of his store, explaining: "this new generation is different and I don't want to worry about a bullet some dark night". He died of cancer on September 1, 1994, at the age of 63.
Emmett Till's mother married Gene Mobley, became a teacher, and changed her surname to Till-Mobley. She continued to educate people about her son's murder. In 1992, Mamie had the opportunity to listen while Bryant was interviewed about his involvement in Emmett's murder. With Bryant unaware that she was listening, he asserted that Emmett Till had ruined HIS life, expressed no remorse, and said: "Emmett Till is dead. I don't know why he can't just stay dead."
In 1996, documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, who was greatly moved by the open-casket photograph, started background research for a feature film he planned to make about the murder. He asserted that as many as 14 people may have been involved, including Carolyn Bryant Donham (who by this point had remarried). Mose Wright had heard someone with "a lighter voice" affirm that Emmett was the one in his front yard immediately before Bryant and Milam drove away with the boy. Beauchamp spent the next nine years producing The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which was released in 2003.
In 2005 Emmett Till’s body was exhumed and the cook County coroner conducted an autopsy. Using DNA from his relatives and dental comparisons, the exhumed body was positively identified as Emmett Till. The autopsy discovered that the body had extensive cranial damage, from the gunshot wound as well as a broken left femur, and two broken wrists.
In February 2007, a Leflore County grand jury, composed primarily of black jurors and empaneled by Joyce Chiles, a black prosecutor, found no credible basis for Beauchamp's claim that 14 people took part in Till's abduction and murder. Beauchamp was angered by this finding. The grand jury also failed to find sufficient cause for charges against Carolyn Bryant Donham. Neither the FBI nor the grand jury found any credible evidence that Henry Lee Loggins, identified by Beauchamp as a suspect who could be charged, had any role in the crime. Other than Loggins, Beauchamp refused to name any of the people he alleged were involved.
In 2006 a highway marker, remembering Emmett Till was erected and it was soon defaced with “KKK” painted over it and then it was completely covered with solid black paint. In 2007, eight site markers were built at various sites related to the Emmett Till murder. The marker at the river where it is presumed Emmett’s body was tossed into the river, was torn down in 2008. A replacement marker was built in 2018 and in July of that year, it had been vandalized by being riddled with bullet holes. This resulted in three University of Mississippi students being suspended from their fraternity after posing in front of the bullet-riddled marker, holding their guns, and uploading the photo to their Instagram account. It is not clear if they are claiming to have actually shot the sign, or if they were just posing in front of it.
In 2019, a fourth marker was erected, this one is made of solid steel and weighs 500 pounds, it is over one inch thick and the manufacturer claims that it is indestructible. I guess only time will tell, if a manufacturer can make something impervious to the radical racist hate that this country continues to produce. I’m John Dodson, this has been, The Secret Sits. Audio Eng. by Gabriel Dodson. Orig Artwork provided by Tony Ley.
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