1. B. J. Skelton, “Visiting Newsmen Pack Typewriters, Head for Homes,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 24, 1955, 1; Russell Harris, “4 Worlds of the South Highlighted by Trial,” Detroit News, September 24, 1955, 1; John Herbers, “Cross-Burning at Sumner Went Almost Un-Noticed Yesterday,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 22, 1955, 1.
2. These descriptions of Boyack come from his son, James Edmund Boyack Jr., email to author, February 8, 2011.
3. Skelton, “Visiting Newsmen Pack,” 1.
4. James E. Boyack, “Courier’s James Boyack Hangs Head in Shame,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 1, 1955, 1.
5. “New Rochelle Demos Ask Action on Mississippi,” Daily Worker (New York), September 27, 1955, 3.
6. Virginia Gardner and Roosevelt Ward Jr., “20,000 in Harlem Flay Till Verdict,” Daily Worker (New York), September 26, 1955, 8.
7. “3 Harlem Street Rallies Hit Terror in Mississippi,” Daily Worker (New York), September 26, 1955, 2; “Mass Meet Crowd Bitter, Mad, Sullen,” New York Amsterdam News, October 1, 1955, 7.
8. “Acquitted Men Stay in Jail,” Jackson State Times, September 24, 1955, 10A; “Leflore Officials Delay Fixing Bond in Till Case,” Jackson Daily News, September 25, 1955, 1.
9. Gardner and Ward, “20,000 in Harlem,” 1; Ted Poston, “‘My Son Didn’t Die in Vain,’ Till’s Mother Tells Rally,” New York Post, September 26, 1955, 5.
10. Poston, “My Son Didn’t Die in Vain,” 5.
11. Poston, “My Son Didn’t Die in Vain,” 5; Mattie Smith Colin, “Till’s Mom, Diggs Both Disappointed,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), October 1, 1955, 1.
12. Poston, “My Son Didn’t Die in Vain,” 22; Gardner and Ward, “20,000 in Harlem,” 1.
13. Press release by Robert L. Birchman, cochairman, Press and Publicity Committee of the NAACP, titled “NAACP to Stage Mass Protes[t] Meeting on Till Lynching.” The document states that “Mrs. Mamie Bradley, mother of the Till youth will speak at the meeting” scheduled for Sunday, September 25, 1955 at 3:30 P.M. at the Metropolitan Community Church in Chicago. For Huff’s account of her change of plans, see William Henry Huff to B. T. George, December 2, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Special Projects, 1940–1955, Series C, General Office Files, microfilm reel 15 (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1955).
14. Carl Hirsch, “10,000 in Detroit, 10,000 in Chicago Call for U.S. Intervention in Mississippi Terror,” Daily Worker (New York), September 27, 1955, 3 (separate articles by two different reporters share this same headline).
15. William Allan, “10,000 in Detroit, 10,000 in Chicago Call for U.S. Intervention in Mississippi Terror,” Daily Worker (New York), September 27, 1955, 3; “Rep. Diggs Blasts Mississippi Trial,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 26, 1955, 8; “Till Trial Acquittal Protested by Rallies,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 26, 1955, 1; “6000 Here Protest Mississippi Verdict,” Detroit Daily News, September 26, 1955, 8.
16. “6000 Here Protest,” 8; Arthur L. Johnson to Gloster B. Current, September 27, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
17. “2500 Protest in Baltimore,” Daily Worker (New York), September 29, 1955, 1, 3.
18. “NAACP Calls Verdict Rooted in Racist Oppression,” Daily Worker (New York), September 26, 1955, 8.
19. “Powell Says Till Stirs All Europe,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1955.
20. “France Irate Over Till Case,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 26, 1955, 8; “French Hit Verdict in Till Case,” Chicago Defender, October 1, 1955, 43.
21. “A Call for Justice,” New York Post, September 26, 1955, 22; “Rep. Anfuso Asks Brownell Probe Sumner, Miss., Trial,” Daily Worker (New York), September 27, 1955, 3; “Diggs Gives Far Different Appraisal of Trial at Detroit Than at Sumner,” Jackson Daily News, September 26, 1955, 9.
22. “‘Once Proud of the South’ but Renounces Till Verdict,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 26, 1955, 4. Hinant sent a follow-up letter to the Commercial Appeal two weeks later in which he apologized for destroying his Confederate flag, and also clarified his views. “I do not believe in social mixing. I do not believe in mixed marriage. I do not believe in mixed education. I do not believe in mixed neighborhoods.” However, regarding the Till case, “I still do not believe it was a fair trial.” After denying that he was out for publicity, was a Communist sympathizer, or was a member of the NAACP, Hinant affirmed that “I am an American and a Christian. I believe in treating others as I would like to be treated. Every man, regardless of color, has a soul. I would not want to face God on that final day and be sent to hell for mistreating a man because his color was not the same as mine” (“Hinant Explains Till Trial Views,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 9, 1955, 3).
23. Grand Sheikh F. Turner El to His Excellency, the Governor of the State of Mississippi, September 28, 1955, James P. Coleman Papers, Accn. No. 21877, box 23, fd. 3, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Archives and Library Division, Special Collections Section, Manuscript Collection, Jackson (hereafter cited as Coleman Papers).
24. Telegram of Ardie A. Halyard to Frank P. Zeidler; Frank P. Zeidler to Walter J. Kohler, September 28, 1955, both in Coleman Papers, box 23, fd. 3.
25. “A Southerner” to John Whitten, September 24, 1955, William Bradford Huie Papers, Cms 84, box 38, fd. 353a, Special Collections, Ohio State University Library, Columbus (hereafter cited as Huie Papers).
26. Mrs. Frank E. Moore to John W. Whitten, September 29, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
27. Dana Wier to John Whitten, September 25, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
28. A. B. Nimitz to John Whitten, September 28, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
29. W. W. Malone to J. J. Breland, September 23, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
30. J. J. Breland to W. W. Malone, September 26, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
31. “Reactions Reverberate Around World on Till Trial’s Outcome,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 27, 1955, 1; “Thousands at Paris Till Protest Meet,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 28, 1955, 1.
32. “Till Kidnap Pair May Be Out on Bond Friday,” New York Post, September 28, 1955, 4; “Hearing Set Friday for Bryant, Milam,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 28, 1955, 2.
33. Harold Foreman, “Reports Till Boy Alive in Detroit Bring ‘Hoax’ Comment from Mother,” Jackson Daily News, September 29, 1955, 1.
34. Allan, “10,000 in Detroit, 10,000 in Chicago,” 3; “Dixie Verdict Assailed in 24-Hr. Rally,” Detroit News, September 30, 1955, 14.
35. “Strider Believes Till Is Still Alive,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, September 29, 1955, 1; “Rumors Flying That Till’s Alive Somewhere in Detroit,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 30, 1955, 1.
36. “Bryant, Milam Released Under $10,000 Bond on Kidnap Charges,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 30, 1955, 1.
37. “‘A Cruel Hoax’: Till’s Mother,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 29, 1955, 4; Foreman, “Reports Till Boy Alive,” 1.
38. Jack Stapleton, “Query Lingers: Is Till Dead?,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 30, 1955, 1.
39. “Yarn About Till Being in City Is Denied by Negro,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 30, 1955, 1.
40. “2 Negro ‘Whistling Killing’ Witnesses Still Missing and Are Feared Slain,” New York Post, September 29, 1955, 5; “Fate of 2 Witnesses Remains a Mystery,” Daily Worker (New York), October 3, 1955, 2.
41. “Till Witness Under Guard,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 29, 1955, 4; “Willie Reed, Till Witness, Starting Life Anew, Chicago,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 29, 1955, 2.
42. Bill Spell, “Daily News Readers Offer Help to Send Willie Reed’s Girl Friend to Chicago,” Jackson Daily News, September 29, 1955, 1.
43. “Ella Mae Shuns Willie,” Jackson Daily News, September 30, 1955, 1; Willie Reed, author interview, February 6, 2007, Chicago.
44. “Reed Boy, Bradley Woman Fled State for ‘Safety’ but Police Guard Homes,” Jackson Daily News, September 30, 1955, 1.
45. Reed, author interview.
46. “Reed Boy, Bradley Woman Fled State,” 1.
47. “Bryant and Milam Released on $10,000 Bonds for Appearance Before Grand Jury November 7,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, September 30, 1955, 1; Helen Shearon, “Bryant and Milam Freed Under Bond,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 1, 1955, 1.
48. Shearon, “Bryant and Milam Freed,” 1; “Till Kidnap Suspects Free on $10,000 Bond,” Jackson State Times, September 30, 1955, 1A.
49. “Bryant and Milam Released on $10,000 Bonds,” 1; William Middlebrooks, “Milam and Bryant Freed on $10,000 Bond at Hearing,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, October 1, 1955, 1; “Till Kidnap Suspects Free on $10,000 Bond,” 1A; “Bryant, Milam Released Under $10,000 Bond,” 1.
50. “Milwaukee Rally Asks Intervention,” Daily Worker (New York), September 29, 1955, 3; “U.S. Intervention in Till Case Urged in Many Cities,” Daily Worker (New York), September 30, 1955, 3; “Powell Urges Special Session to Adopt Anti-Lynch Law,” Daily Worker (New York), September 30, 1955, 3; “Community Leaders Protest in Buffalo,” Daily Worker (New York), September 29, 1955, 3; “Reactions Reverberate,” 1.
51. “U.S. Intervention in Till Case Urged,” 1, 3.
52. Jamie L. Whitten to J. J. Breland, John Whitten, Sidney Carlton, Harvey Henderson, and J. W. Kellum, September 27, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
53. “The Verdict at Sumner,” Jackson Daily News, September 25, 1955, 8.
54. The Civil Rights Statute is explained in Jonathan L. Entin, “Emmett Till and Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights,” paper presented on September 16, 2005, at Stillman College, Tuscaloosa, Ala., copy in author’s possession.
55. The FBI probe is summarized in a memorandum from F. L. Price to Mr. [Alex] Rosen, February 29, 1956, FBI FOIA release to Devery S. Anderson, 2006, re Emmett Till (hereafter cited as FBI file on Emmett Till). Decades later, Herbert Brownell, Eisenhower’s attorney general, recalled that his office entered into the matter briefly but quickly decided it had no jurisdiction. See Herbert Brownell Jr., interview, conducted by Blackside, Inc., November 15, 1985, for Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/; Herbert Brownell and John P. Burke, Advising Ike: The Memoirs of Attorney General Herbert Brownell (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 204.
56. “Missing Till Witnesses Flight Told,” Chicago American, October 1, 1955, 11; L. Alex Wilson, “Wilson Tells How He Found, Got Collins to Chicago,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1955, 1, and Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), October 8, 1955, 1, reprinted in Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 180.
57. Wilson, “Wilson Tells How He Found,” 1; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 178–79; “Henry Loggins Looms in Case as Vital Link,” St. Louis Argus, October 14, 1955, 1; Howard B. Woods, “Witness in Till Case Vanishes,” and Steve Duncan, “Relatives of Loggins Are Worried,” both St. Louis Argus, October 28, 1955, 1.
58. Wilson, “Wilson Tells How He Found,” 1; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 179–81.
59. Wilson, “Wilson Tells How He Found,” 1; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 181.
60. “Till’s Mother Hits ‘Bungling’ by Prosecutor,” Chicago American, October 4, 1955, 4. According to Bradley, “The prosecutor did not visit the places which testimony brought out at the trial were the scenes of the crime. He did not look over the truck on which my son Emmett was supposed to have been seen riding with white men, and he did not follow up many leads his office received.” Bradley was not correct in most of her criticisms. As discussed in earlier chapters, state investigators did go to the shed in Drew where Willie Reed said he heard sounds of a beating, although they did not conduct scientific tests. Highway inspector Gwin Cole announced on the fourth day of the trial that he did find the truck, but because neither he nor the press said anything further about it, he may have discovered it was the wrong vehicle. It is also true that Chatham did not allow for the black press to check out the Charleston jail after it was rumored Collins and Loggins were incarcerated there, but this was done, he said, because prosecutors had already visited the jail and the men were not there. Robert Smith said Cole visited two jails, which clearly upset the sheriffs in charge of each of these jails. See Clark Porteous, “Officers Work All Night on Searches,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 21, 1955, 7; Ralph Hutto, “NAACP Leader Says Two Witnesses Disappeared,” Jackson State Times, September 23, 1955, 6A; L. Alex Wilson, “Reveals Two Key Witnesses Jailed,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), October 1, 1955, 2; Murray Kempton, “They Didn’t Forget,” New York Post, September 26, 1955, 22; Clark Porteous, “Mrs. Bryant on Stand,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 22, 1955, 4.
61. “Till’s Mother in Seclusion,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, October 5, 1955, 7.
62. L. Alex Wilson, “Here Is What ‘Too Tight’ Told the Defender,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1955, 35; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 182–83, 191.
63. “‘Missing’ Witness Denied He Saw Till Slaying,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, October 4, 1955, 19; L. Alex Wilson, “Collins Denies Any Link to Till,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1955, 1, and Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), October 8, 1955, 1; Wilson, “Here Is What ‘Too Tight’ Told the Defender,” 35; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 182–94.
64. Wilson, “Here Is what ‘Too Tight’ Told the Defender,” 35; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 187–89.
65. Ted Poston, “‘Missing’ Till Witness Admits Milam Took Him Out of Town,” New York Post, October 4, 1955, 5.
66. L. Alex Wilson, “‘Too Tight’ Collins Missing,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 1, 2.
67. Wilson, “Here Is What ‘Too Tight’ Told the Defender,” 35; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 186, 189–90.
68. “Reporter Dares Miss. Death,” New York Age Defender, October 8, 1955, 1, 2; Poston, “‘Missing’ Till Witness,” 5.
69. Poston, “‘Missing’ Till Witness,” 5.
70. Bill Spell, “A Daily News Newspaperman Dared to Penetrate Chicago’s South Side: State Negroes Held ‘Captive’ in Chicago,” Jackson Daily News, October 5, 1955, 1. In 2010, Spell said the investigation was his idea, and that his immediate supervisor, Jimmy Ward, approved it and gave him the go-ahead (Bill Spell, author telephone interview, August 20, 2010).
71. “Ignore Doctor, 2 Grill Young Reed,” Chicago Defender, October 15, 1955, 1; Spell, author telephone interview. William Chrisler (1922–2010) later served in Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a major general in 1978 (William Julius Chrisler obituary, published by Wright and Ferguson Funeral Home, Jackson, Miss., http://obits.dignitymemorial.com).
72. Spell, “Daily News Newspaperman Dared,” 1; Mort Edelstein, “Witnesses Called ‘Prisoners,’” Chicago American, October 7, 1955, 1.
73. Spell, “Daily News Newspaperman Dared,” 1.
74. Bill Spell, “Mandy Bradley Refutes NAACP Claim Her Life Was in Danger, Then,” Jackson Daily News, October 6, 1955, 1.
75. Spell, “Mandy Bradley Refutes NAACP,” 1, 7.
76. “Till Witness Threats Probed,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1955, 34; Spell, author telephone interview.
77. Spell, “Mandy Bradley Refutes NAACP,” 7.
78. Bill Spell, “Mose Wright Couldn’t Be Reached without a ‘Middle Man’,” Jackson Daily News, October 7, 1955, 1.
79. Spell, “Mose Wright Couldn’t Be Reached,” 1. Spell recalled in 2010 that “word got around fast that we were there,” and remembers the notes under his door as being, for the most part, from the local press (Spell, author telephone interview).
80. Spell, “Mose Wright Couldn’t Be Reached,” 1.
81. Spell, “Mose Wright Couldn’t Be Reached,” 1; Charles C. Diggs Jr., “Emmett Till Trial Over but Negros Should Never Forget Its Meaning,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 8, 1955, 4.
82. Edelstein, “Witnesses Called ‘Prisoners,’” 1; Bill Spell and W. C. Shoemaker, “Alonzo Refutes Charges Made by Congressman Diggs,” Jackson Daily News, October 6, 1955, 1; “Witness to Get Free Glasses,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1955, 34.
83. Spell and Shoemaker, “Alonzo Refutes Charges,” 1; James L. Hicks, open letter to US Attorney General Herbert Brownell and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, in “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” Washington Afro-American, November 19, 1955, 14, reprinted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 198.
84. Bill Spell, “Effort to Tell Mandy of Her Husband Fails as Phone Connection Was Cut,” Jackson Daily News, October 8, 1955, 1.
85. “Negro ‘Captive’ Articles Doubted, Mandy Bradley Says Her Husband Missing,” Jackson Daily News, October 6, 1955, 7.
86. Edleston, “Witnesses Called ‘Prisoners,’” 1.
87. Edleston, “Witnesses Called ‘Prisoners,’” 1, 2.
88. Edleston, “Witnesses Called ‘Prisoners,’” 2.
89. To be sure, Wright’s story was somewhat problematic. Shortly after the trial, he gave several speeches and interviews, and sometimes the cemetery story came up. Some details would be expected to vary in multiple accounts, but one important aspect seemed to change drastically. In at least three accounts, Wright stated or implied that he heard from a neighbor that two men went to his house, but that they did nothing more than look around outside (Mose Wright interview, archival clip shown in Keith Beauchamp, prod., The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till [Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005], and Felix Wold, “Mose Tells of Sleeping in Cemetery but ‘Middle Man’ Attended Interview,” Jackson Daily News, October 8, 1955, 1). In a tape-recorded account, Wright said specifically that the trespassers were spotted “flashing a light all around, but they didn’t go in” (Moses Wright, “I Saw Them Take Emmett Till,” Front Page Detective, February 1956, 28). However, on several other occasions, he said that when he came home from the cemetery in the morning, a neighbor told him the men were yelling “Preacher, Uncle Mose, come on out here.” Then Wright noticed that his screen door was broken, that beds were overturned, and that his home had been “ransacked.” In a telephone interview with a New York Post reporter published on October 3, Wright described those who vandalized his home as “three carloads of white men,” similar to the version from Diggs that caught Bill Spell’s eye days earlier (Ted Poston, “Mose Wright Left Everything to Flee for Life,” New York Post, October 3, 1955, 1. See also Moses Wright, “How I Escaped from Mississippi,” Jet 8, no. 23 [October 13, 1955]: 10).
When asked in 2007 if he recalled this incident, Wright’s youngest son, Simeon, said that he remembered the version that two white men came to the house with flashlights, but that any claims saying the house had been ransacked were not true (Wheeler Parker Jr., Crosby Smith Jr., and Simeon Wright, author interview, February 7, 2007, Argo, Ill., comments by Wright). Grover Frederick, the Wrights’ landlord, dismissed the account of a break-in when questioned about it also, saying that was the first he had heard about it. The day Mose Wright left the state, he visited Leflore County sheriff George Smith, telling Smith he would be back for the kidnapping trial. Smith noted that Wright did not mention the alleged incident and appeared “calm and without a worry in the world” (“Till’s Uncle Says He Fled for Life after Trial,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 5, 1955, 28). It remains a mystery as to what really occurred the night in question, and it is even more puzzling why Wright gave conflicting accounts of the details. Yet something happened that scared him and prompted him to leave behind his cotton and his belongings and move to Chicago weeks before he had planned. Perhaps he thought he needed to convince skeptical Mississippians that he was afraid for his life, and having the trespassers go into the house and vandalize it accomplished that more than if people interpreted the incident to be a harmless visit by two men who did nothing more than shine their lights and leave.
90. Edleston, “Witnesses Called ‘Prisoners,’” 2.
91. “Bill Spell Answers the American,” Jackson Daily News, October 7, 1955, 1; Spell, author telephone interview.
92. “Bill Spell Answers the American,” 1.
93. “Ignore Doctor,” 1.
94. Spell, author telephone interview.
95. Spell, author telephone interview.
96. The actual article is “CRC ‘Festival’ Opens with Theme Centered on Till,” Jackson Daily News, October 10, 1955, 1.
97. Mamie E. Bradley to Roy Wilkins, October 10, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 15.
98. Gloster Current to Billy Jones, October 5, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
99. Tarea H. Pittman to Gloster B. Current, October 14, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
100. Jerry Gordon, “In Memoriam,” letter to the editor, Cleveland Call and Post, October 15, 1955, 8C.
101. Mort Edelstein, “Till Witness Decides Not to Testify,” Chicago American, October 10, 1955, 5; “Gov. White Tells Reed Boy’s Mother Her Fears Are Based on Propaganda,” Jackson Daily News, October 10, 1955, 1.
102. Roy Wilkins to Mamie Bradley, November 15, 1955; William Durham to Miley O. Williamson, October 8, 1955; “Agreement Between Rev. Moses Wright and the Columbus and Dayton Branches of the NAACP,” signed by Barbee William Durham and Moses Wright, October 8, 1955, all in Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
103. Durham to Williamson, October 8, 1955.
104. For more on Roosevelt and her outspoken stance on racial issues, see Pamela Tyler, “‘Blood on Your Hands’: White Southerners’ Criticisms of Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II,” in Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South, ed. Glenn Feldman (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 96–115.
105. Eleanor Roosevelt, “I Think the Till Jury Will Have Uneasy Conscience,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, October 11, 1955, 6, reprinted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 136–37. Roosevelt’s “My Day” columns ran from 1936 to 1962. The entire run is available at http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/.
106. “Roosevelt Asks Law to Prevent Till Occurrences,” Jackson Daily News, October 12, 1955, 3; “2,000 in Frisco Hit Till Murder; Rep. Roosevelt Urges U.S. to Act,” Daily Worker (New York), October 19, 1955, 3.
107. “Press Release, Office of Honorable Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., 11 October 1955,” quoted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 133–36; Harry Raymond, “20,000 at Rally Cheer ‘March on Washington,’” Daily Worker (New York), October 12, 1955, 1.
108. American Jewish Committee, memorandum, October 7, 1955, reprinted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 138–43. See also “Lynching Acquittal Shocks All Europe,” Daily Worker (New York), October 11, 1955, 2, for several quotations from European papers.
109. “Minnesotan Is Using Till Case in Politics,” Jackson Daily News, October 12, 1955, 3.
110. Ethel L. Payne, “Tom [sic] Till Died for Democracy; Son Its Victim,” New York Age Defender, October 1, 1955, 2.
111. “Father of Young Till Died for His Country,” New York Amsterdam News, October 1, 1955, 7.
112. Roosevelt, “I Think the Till Jury,” 6.
113. “In Memoriam, Emmett Till,” Life, October 10, 1955, 48.
114. “Mississippi Solons Bare Hanging of Till’s Father,” Chicago Defender, October 22, 1955, 1.
115. Ethel L. Payne, “Army Gave Till Facts to Eastland,” Chicago Defender, October 22, 1955, 1; John Stennis to M. G. Vaiden, November 26, 1955, John C. Stennis Collection, Series 29, Civil Rights, box 5, fd. 24, Congressional and Political Research Center, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Starkville.
116. “Till’s Father Had Been Billed ‘War Hero’” during Fund-Raising Drives,” Jackson Daily News, October 15, 1955, 1.
117. “About Till’s Father (an editorial),” Jackson Daily News, October 15, 1955, 1.
118. “Till’s Father Had Been Billed ‘War Hero,’” 1.
119. Lemorse Mallory and Mamie E. Till, marriage certificate, dated August 19, 1946, no. 1925866, filed August 20, 1946, Cook County Clerk’s Office, Chicago; National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938–1946 [database online], Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com, Operations Inc., 2005; photocopies of documents related to Mallory’s final payment and discharge were sent to author with a covering letter dated November 20, 2008, from Tina Hanson, archives technician, National Personnel Records Center.
120. Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Parker.
121. “GI Buddies Say Till’s Dad Was ‘Railroaded’ in Italy,” Jet 8, no. 26 (November 3, 1955): 4–5.
122. “Mamie Bradley’s Untold Story,” installment four, Daily Defender (Chicago), March 1, 1956, 5.
123. James G. Chesnutt to William Bradford Huie, October 18, 1945, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 349.
124. Louis Till burial, disinterment, and reburial records, sent with a covering letter by Thomas M. Jones, Chief, Freedom of Information and Privacy Act Office, to author, March 16, 2009.
125. Ezra Pound, Pisan Cantos, edited and annotated with an introduction by Richard Sieburth (New York: New Directions Books, 2003), x–xii.
126. Pound, Pisan Cantos, lines 170–72, 269.
127. See, for example, Alice Kaplan, The Interpreter (New York: Free Press, 2005); J. Robert Lilly, Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe during World War II (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007).
128. United States v. Private Fred A. McMurray and Private Louis Till, trial transcript; Branch Office of the Judge Advocate General with the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, U.S. Army, Board of Review, United States v. Privates Fred A. McMurray and Louis Till (36 392 273), both of 177th Port Company, 379th Port Battalion, Transportation Corps, Peninsular Base Section, Trial by G.C.M., convened at Leghorn, Italy, February 17, 1945, copies in author’s possession.
129. H. S. J. Walker, M.D., to editor, Life, October 18, 1955, Coleman Papers, box 23, fd. 3.
130. Wade Milam to editor, Life, October 18, 1955, Coleman Papers, box 23, fd. 3; Wade Milam, “Writes a Letter to Life Editor,” Jackson Daily News, October 21, 1955, 6; Houck and Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press, 138. See also Ruth Feldstein, “‘I Wanted the Whole World to See’: Race, Gender, and Constructions of Motherhood in the Death of Emmett Till,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 275; Valerie Smith, “Emmett Till’s Ring,” Women Studies Quarterly 36, nos. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 2008): 157.
1. “Till’s Mother Stirs 9,500 in Washington,” Daily Worker (New York), October 20, 1955, 3; Larry Still, “Time Out for Crying,” Washington Afro-American, October 22, 1955, 1, 5; “Prayer Meets Planned for Six Cities,” Washington Afro-American, October 22, 1955, 5.
2. “Uncle of Lynched Boy Tells of Death Night,” Cleveland Call and Post, October 22, 1955, 2A; “Meetings Sponsored by NAACP Branches Featuring Speakers other than Mrs. Bradley,” n.d., Papers of the NAACP: Part 18: Special Subjects, 1940–1955: Series C, General Office files, microfilm reel 14 (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1955). Reporter James Hicks noted that “every colored woman I talked to in Mississippi was critical of Mose Wright for permitting the two white men to come into his home and take the Till boy in the first place.” They praised Wright for being brave enough to come testify at the trial, but they were adamant that “he should have killed them both when they broke into his home” (James L. Hicks, “Hicks Says U.S. Ought to Act Now,” Baltimore Afro-American, November 19, 1955, 2; see also “What the People Say: Blast Till Pacifists,” letter to the editor, Chicago Defender, September 17, 1955, 9).
3. Ethel L. Payne, “Army Gave Till Facts to Eastland,” Chicago Defender, October 22, 1955, 2; “Senate May Hear Till Lynch Story,” Chicago Defender, October 29, 1955, 1, 2.
4. “Vatican Urges U.S. Catholics to Help Erase Stain of Till Murder,” Daily Worker (New York), October 18, 1955, 3.
5. “Abe Stark Asks Anti-Lynch Law,” Daily Worker (New York), October 19, 1955, 3.
6. “Rabb Says White House Is Concerned Over Till Case,” Chicago Defender, October 22, 1955, 12; E. Frederic Morrow, Black Man in the White House: A Diary of the Eisenhower Years by the Administration Officer for Special Projects, the White House, 1955–1961 (New York: Coward-McCann, 1963), 223.
7. William G. Nunn to Maxwell Rabb, October 28, 1955; Maxwell Rabb to William G. Nunn, October 31, 1955, both in Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, online documents, www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents.html.
8. For contrasting views, see Robert Fredrick Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984); David A. Nichols, A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).
9. Still, “Time Out for Crying,” 5; “Prayer Meets Planned,” 5.
10. Memorandum from Mr. Price to [Alex] Rosen, October 13, 1955, FBI FOIA release to Devery S. Anderson, 2006, re Emmett Till (hereafter cited as FBI file on Emmett Till).
11. Edna F. Kelly to J. Edgar Hoover, October 18, 1955; J. Edgar Hoover to Edna F. Kelly, October 24, 1955, both in FBI file on Emmett Till.
12. “Chicago Negro Group Presses FBI on Till Case,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), October 25, 1955, 2; “Negroes Rebuffed in Asking Federal Intervention,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, October 25, 1955, 1.
13. Memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover to Mr. Tolson, Mr. Nichols, Mr. Boardman, Mr. [Alex] Rosen, October 24, 1955, FBI file on Emmett Till. One author has documented that during his tenure as governor, Coleman’s “response to Till suggests that the struggle for racial equality also prompted a change in how Southern officials responded to racial violence. It pushed the South to centralize authority, rein in local officials, improve the administration of justice, and adopt a less violent stance towards blacks—at least publicly.” See Anders Walker, “The Violent Bear It Away: Emmett Till and the Modernization of Law Enforcement in Mississippi,” San Diego Law Review 46 (2009): 459–503.
14. Bryant store sale ad, Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, October 19, 1955, 6.
15. Joe Atkins and Tom Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past to ‘Stay Dead,’” Jackson Clarion–Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 1H, 3H.
16. Atkins and Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past,” 3H.
17. “Mrs. Bradley Wires Moms of 3 Slain Chicago Boys,” Chicago Defender, October 29, 1955, 7; James A. Jack, Three Boys Missing: The Tragedy That Exposed the Pedophilia Underworld (Chicago: HPH Publishing, 2006), 387. For more on this case, see Gene O’Shea, Unbridled Rage: A True Story of Organized Crime, Corruption, and Murder in Chicago (New York: Penguin, 2005); Richard C. Lindberg and Gloria Jean Sykes, Shattered Sense of Innocence: The 1955 Murders of Three Chicago Children (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006).
18. William Henry Huff to B. T. George, December 2, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 15; Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 208. In her memoir, Till-Mobley did not recall the name of the attorney Mooty took her to see, but she wrote, “I was a little concerned when I arrived and saw a run-down building and had to climb those rickety steps.” She does not mention the firing of Mooty, but describes the terms of the contract he was pressuring her to sign. She also indicates that this occurred after her November 7 dispute with the NAACP (discussed later in this chapter). In recapping Bradley’s difficulties with Mooty, however, Roy Wilkins said in a letter to Bradley: “In telephone conversations with me October 20 and 21, you said you were disturbed by some development involving Mr. Mooty. . . . Later you telephoned me that you had taken care of the Mooty angle and wanted to take your father on tour as your companion” (Roy Wilkins to Mamie Bradley, November 15, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14).
19. Roosevelt Ward, “Negro Youth Ready to Testify Again at Trial of Emmett Till’s Kidnapers,” Daily Worker (New York), October 25, 1955, 3.
20. “Report on Mamie Bradley Mass Meetings Sponsored by NAACP Branches,” Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
21. “Miss. Killing Brings New Members, Gifts to NAACP,” Louisville Defender, September 29, 1955, 1; “Till Protest Meetings,” Crisis, November 1955, 547.
22. “NAACP Leader Blasts Mississippi Law Enforcement,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, November 5, 1955, 1.
23. “Four Witnesses Called in Probe,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 2; Gloster Current to Ruby Hurley, November 4, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 15.
24. “Marshall Says Till Case ‘Horrible’ Terrorist Example,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 7, 1955, 1.
25. Caption accompanying photograph of Willie Reed and Mose Wright under the heading “Wait to Testify Before Grand Jury,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, November 7, 1955, 8; Sam Johnson, “Grand Jury Not Examined Witnesses in Till Kidnapping,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, November 8, 1955, 1; “Four Witnesses Called,” 1–2.
26. NAACP press release, November 7, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
27. Wilkins to Bradley, November 15, 1955; “Conversation with Joseph Tobias via long distance from Chicago,” November 9, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 15.
28. Wilkins to Bradley, November 15, 1955; “Mrs. Bradley Says Fee NAACP Idea,” Chicago Defender, November 19, 1955, 2.
29. Franklin H. Williams to NAACP West Coast Leadership, November 8, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
30. “Four Witnesses Called,” 2. Willie Reed’s memory of his grand jury appearance, as evidenced in his interview in Keith Beauchamp, prod., The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005), has caused some confusion. In that interview, Reed said that he and Wright went to the courthouse, but that Milam and Bryant were not there. After around twenty minutes, “we was out of there.” During my interview with Reed, he said essentially the same thing, but added that because Milam and Bryant failed to appear, the trial was called off. When I pointed out that this was not a trial but only a grand jury hearing (which the defendants would not have attended), he held to his recollection that it was, indeed, a trial, and that neither he nor Wright testified because it was canceled. Press footage, as seen in Untold Story, shows both Wright and Reed entering the chamber for the secret grand jury hearing. This footage is not to be confused with coverage of the murder trial in Sumner, because in Greenwood, both men wore suits; in Sumner, they did not. Again, press reports at the time are clear that these two men, as well as Sheriff George Smith and Deputy John Cothran, testified before the grand jury. Reed’s testimony alone lasted fifteen minutes.
31. Roy Wilkins to W. Robert Ming, November 10, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 15.
32. “Conversation with Joseph Tobias.”
33. Telegram from Roy Wilkins to Lester P. Bailey, November 9, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 14.
34. “NAACP Asks Who Did It as Bryant, Milam Freed,” Jackson Daily News, November 10, 1955, 4.
35. “Jury Refuses to Indict Emmett Till Kidnapers,” Daily Worker (New York), November 10, 1955, 1.
36. John Herbers, “‘Case Closed’ as Jury Fails to Indict Pair for Till Kidnaping,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 10, 1955, 1.
37. Minter Krotzer, emails to author, May 17, May 19, and June 7, 2010. Somerville died in 1976 when Krotzer was only twelve. Krotzer recalled hearing, when she was young, that her grandfather had voted for an indictment, but was not positive. During our correspondence, she confirmed through a family member that this was true.
38. Mary Lou Ray, author telephone interview, August 6, 2013. Ray is a cousin of June Broadway. Although Ray did not know Broadway personally, over the years she has known and spoken with several family members who did.
39. Herbers, “Case Closed,” 1; “NAACP Asks Who Did It,” 4.
40. Harry Marsh, “Sheriff Says He Got Little Cooperation,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 10, 1955, 1; “Comment Continues on Till Case; Witnesses Blamed,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 11, 1955, 1.
41. “Grand Jury Ignores Confession; Prefers to Query Witnesses,” Jet 8, no. 29 (November 24, 1955): 6–7.
42. “End of Kidnaping Case Where Leflore Concerned,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, November 10, 1955, 1; “No Kidnap Trial for Milam, Bryant,” Chicago Defender, November 19, 1955, 1, 2.
43. “Grand Jury Frees Accused Kidnappers,” Abilene (Tex.) Reporter, November 10, 1955, 9; “Darkness in Mississippi,” Chicago Daily Sun-Times, November 11, 1955, 37.
44. As quoted in Herbers, “Case Closed,” 1; Jerome Bernstein, “There Is No Justice in Mississippi,” Florida Flambeau (Tallahassee), November 15, 1955, 2; Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 145.
45. Dr. T. D. Patton to John Whitten, September 28, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
46. Russel D. Moore III to Jesse Breland, October 5, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a. Moore was the father-in-law of Bobby DeLaughter, Hines County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith in 1994 for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. Beckwith was found guilty in this, his third trial.
47. J. J. Breland to Russel D. Moore III, October 6, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
48. Two writers who have examined the case note the possibility that Sheriff Smith may not have been as forthcoming in his grand jury testimony as he was in Sumner regarding the kidnap confession he received from Roy Bryant. They see his sudden belief in a conspiracy among the witnesses to free Milam and Bryant and thus embarrass Mississippi as evidence of his insincerity. “Given that grand jury statements would remain secret, we can only surmise that some things had changed since his testimony of September 22” (Houck and Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press, 144).
49. Reed, author interview.
50. “Four Witnesses Called in Probe,” 2.
51. “Willie Reed Gets $1,000 Elk Grant,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 4.
52. “Huff Quits Mrs. Bradley, NAACP Cancels Tour,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 1, 2.
53. “Says Till Funds Given to Kin,” Chicago Defender, November 26, 1955, 36.
54. Mamie Bradley to Roy Wilkins, November 9, 1955, printed in James L. Hicks, “Why Emmett Till’s Mother and NAACP Couldn’t Agree,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 31, 1955, 2.
55. Wilkins to Bradley, November 15, 1955. Mamie’s later recollections over this incident are clearly incorrect. She said in 1988 that the need for more money was not only to pay her father $100 per week but also to help pay his expenses, including airfare. However, she blamed Anna Crockett for insisting on the $5,000 fee. According to Mamie, Crockett said that this figure was necessary in order to pay a salary to Crockett also and for the upkeep of Mamie’s home while she was gone. Mamie held to Crockett’s 1955 story from the Chicago Defender that one of the NAACP leaders out west, which was certainly a reference to Franklin Williams, “was in total agreement that $5,000 was little enough to ask.” She said she settled for $3,500 after talking with Wilkins but that Wilkins inexplicably “just put his foot down,” ended their relationship, and accused her “of capitalizing on my son’s death” (Mamie Till-Mobley and Gene Mobley, interview, in Clenora Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement, 4th ed. [Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2006], 147–48).
In her 2003 memoir, Till-Mobley said that a West Coast leader, a minister (this would have been Sylvester Odum), was able to secure $3,000 and even said he would try to double that, but that Wilkins called her late that night and “bawled me out” (Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 206–7). From the many letters and telegrams between Wilkins and other NAACP leaders, Wilkins’s recorded phone call with Tobias, and Wilkins’s detailed letter to Mamie, it is clear that Mamie’s memory is inaccurate on almost all of the details. Neither Wilkins nor Williams offered a compromise to the previously agreed upon honorarium of $1,100, and the NAACP, contrary to what Mamie thought she remembered later, had already agreed to pay her father’s airfare. Mamie’s air force salary was $3,900 per year. Any monies required for providing a salary for Mamie, her father, and Crockett for only a two-week period, in addition to funds covering her household bills, would hardly total $5,000, the equivalent of $40,000 today.
56. Some authors, having failed to research the entire story of the Mamie Bradley–Roy Wilkins conflict, have made erroneous conclusions about the event. See Ruth Feldstein, “‘I Wanted the Whole World to See’: Race, Gender, and Constructions of Motherhood in the Death of Emmett Till,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 282–87; Jacqueline Goldsby, “The High and Low Tech of It: The Meaning of Lynching and the Death of Emmett Till,” Yale Journal of Criticism 9, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 266.
57. Evers-Williams, author telephone interview.
58. “Mother of Till Raising Money,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, November 15, 1955, 7.
59. “Stratton Asks Federal Probe in Till Slaying,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 11, 1955, part 1, 2; “Brownell Rejects Request for Action in Emmett Till Case,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, December 6, 1955, 7; Jonathan L. Entin, “Emmett Till and Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights,” paper presented at Stillman College, Tuscaloosa, Ala., September 16, 2005, copy in author’s possession. The only other provision that would have allowed for federal intervention was Title 18, USC, section 241, which forbade conspiracies to violate federal rights. In 1955, this part of the civil rights statue was not clear, and, according to Entin, “even an administration that was strongly committed to protecting African Americans might have concluded that prosecuting Emmett Till’s killers would face substantial legal hurdles.”
60. “Government Official Labels Till Case ‘Black Mark,’” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, November 21, 1955, 1.
61. James L. Hicks, open letter to US Attorney General Herbert Brownell and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, in “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” Washington Afro-American, November 19, 1955, 4, 14, reprinted in Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 194–99.
62. Office memorandum from F. L. Price to Mr. [Alex] Rosen, February 29, 1956, FBI file on Emmett Till.
63. Roy Wilkins to B. T. George, December 2, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18, Series C, reel 15.
64. L. Alex Wilson, “Gus Courts, Miss. NAACP Head Tells How He Was Shot Down,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), December 3, 1955, 1, 2; “Leader Left State after Being Shot,” Baltimore Afro-American, November 10, 1956, 8. Courts spent twenty-one days in the hospital and then moved to Chicago, where he began working for the NAACP.
65. Milton S. Katz, “E. Frederick Morrow and Civil Rights in the Eisenhower Administration,” Phylon 42, no. 2 (2nd Quarter 1981): 133–34.
66. Memorandum of E. Frederick Morrow to Maxell Rabb, November 29, 1955, Eisenhower Library, online documents, www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents.html.
67. Morrow to Rabb, November 29, 1955; see also Nichols, Matter of Justice, 117.
68. “Dr. T. R. M. Howard to Address Ala. Omegas,” Birmingham (Ala.) World, November 18, 1955, 1; “Famed Dr. Howard, Rights Fighter, Montgomery Speaker,” Birmingham (Ala.) World, November 22, 1955, 1, and Alabama Tribune (Montgomery), November 25, 1955, 1. Two of the articles announced that the meeting would be at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, but a caption under Howard’s photo still had it scheduled at Tillibody Auditorium.
69. Emory O. Jackson, “Howard Thinking About ‘March on Washington,’” Birmingham (Ala.) World, December 6, 1955, 6.
70. Jackson, “Howard Thinking,” 6; David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 138.
71. Rosa Parks interview, conducted by Blackside, Inc., November 14, 1985, for Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/.
72. Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013), 61–65; Rosa Parks, with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992), 113–17; Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks (New York: Penguin, 2000), 103–8; Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking Books, 1987), 66.
73. Theoharis, Rebellious Life, 72–115; Parks and Haskins, Rosa Parks, 125–60; Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 119–73; Williams, Eyes on the Prize, 60–89. For detailed studies of the boycott, see Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper, 1958); Donnie Williams, with Wayne Greenhaw, The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2006).
74. “Mamie Till-Mobley, Civil Rights Heroine, Eulogized in Chicago,” Jet 103, no. 5 (January 27, 2003): 18.
75. Don Babwin, “Civil Rights Advocates Seek Historical Status for Church,” Charleston (W.Va.) Sunday Gazette-Mail, November 20, 2005, 5A. Jackson had told this story a month earlier at Parks’s funeral. In the years since, the quote, although only a secondhand statement, has been assumed to be authoritative and was placed on a marker in front of the Bryant store in Money, Mississippi, in May 2011. Mississippi state senator David Jordan recently wrote of his own encounter with Parks, which backs up the Jackson story. “I remember engaging in a conversation with Rosa Parks and hearing from her own mouth that the death of Emmett Till is what triggered her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man. It sent a chill down my spine to be engaged in a conversation with someone so resolute, whose strong belief in a cause made her a national heroine” (David L. Jordan, with Robert L. Jenkins, David L. Jordan: From the Mississippi Cotton Fields to the State Senate, A Memoir [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014], 18).
1. One study of ten national publications demonstrated that they paid little attention to the case to begin with, running few stories between the murder and trial verdict. Brian Thornton examined coverage of ten magazines throughout the twelve months spanning August 28, 1955, until August 28, 1956. In general, he found coverage lacking, leading him to conclude that “despite current claims and memories that an outraged nation demanded justice for [Till] in 1955, these national magazines reveal a different reality.” Thornton does not consider the role of daily or weekly newspapers that made the story international news, or the protest rallies that lasted for months after the trial. In addition, he overlooked an article in the black magazine Ebony, a publication that he said reported nothing on Emmett Till over the course of that year. See Clotye Murdock, “Land of the Till Murder,” Ebony, April 1956, 91–96. Although this story was a report on the current climate and economy in the Mississippi Delta, it contained several photos with captions regarding the Till case. See Brian Thornton, “The Murder of Emmett Till: Myth, Memory, and National Magazine Response,” Journalism History 36, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 96–104.
2. Herbert S. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades (New York: MacMillan, 1972), 444–45. In his State of the Union speech, delivered on January 5, 1956, President Eisenhower addressed civil rights and related issues and outlined a new civil rights bill. He said in part: “The stature of our leadership in the free world has increased through the past three years because we have made more progress than ever before in a similar period to assure our citizens equality in justice, in opportunity and in civil rights. We must expand this effort on every front. We must strive to have every person judged and measured by what he is, rather than by his color, race or religion. There will soon be recommended to the Congress a program further to advance the efforts of the Government, within the area of Federal responsibility, to accomplish these objectives.” For the full speech, see “Text of President Eisenhower’s Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” New York Times, January 6, 1956, 10–11; www.pbs.org.
3. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades, 444–45.
4. “Mississippi Again,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 17, 1955, 1, 2; “Miss. Negro’s Slayer Went to Home of Till Case Figure after Shooting,” New York Post, December 9, 1955, 63; “Witnesses Say Slain Negro Didn’t Gun-Duel White Man,” Jet 9, no. 7 (December 22, 1955): 7.
5. “Use Milam Car in Miss. Slaying,” Chicago Defender, December 17, 1955, 1, 2; “Mississippi Again,” 1, 2; David Halberstam, “Tallahatchie County Acquits a Peckerwood,” Reporter 14, no. 8 (April 19, 1956): 27.
6. “Miss. Negro’s Slayer,” 3, 63.
7. “Kimbrell Is Denied Bond in Slaying at Glendora,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, December 29, 1955, 1; “Judge Denies Bond for Glendora Man,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, January 10, 1956, 1; “Miss. Negro’s Slayer,” 3. The accused killer’s last name is spelled as both “Kimbell” and “Kimbrell” in several sources.
8. “Kimbrell Is Denied Bond,” 1; “Judge Denies Bond,” 1.
9. Halberstam, “Tallahatchie County Acquits,” 27.
10. “Seek Atonement for Latest Mississippi Murder,” Chicago Defender, December 24, 1955, 3; “Witnesses Say Slain Negro,” 8.
11. Michael Vinson Williams, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2011), 128.
12. “Widow Drowns as Trial of Mate’s Slayer Opens,” Chicago Defender, March 17, 1956, 1; Moses J. Newson, “Acquit Kimbell in Miss. Trial,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 14, 1956, 1.
13. James L. Hicks, “Why Emmett Till’s Mother and NAACP Couldn’t Agree,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 31, 1955, 2; Clyde Reid, “Mamie Bradley Says NAACP Used Son,” New York Amsterdam News, December 24, 1955, 1; Roy Wilkins to Mamie Bradley, November 15, 1955, Papers of the NAACP: Part 18: Special Projects, 1940–1955, Series C: General Office Files, microfilm reel 14 (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1995); “Huff Quits Mrs. Bradley, NAACP Cancels Tour,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 1, 2.
14. Hicks, “Why Emmett Till’s Mother,” 2; Reid, “Mamie Bradley Says NAACP Used Son,” 1.
15. “Louis [sic] Till’s Mother Sets New Jersey Tour,” Washington Afro-American, January 3, 1956, 19.
16. “Brooklyn Audience Told How Till Died in Miss.,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 14, 1956, 17; “Surprise Guest Stirs NAACP Annual Meeting,” NAACP press release, January 5, 1956, Papers of Medgar Wiley Evers and Myrlie Beasley Evers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Archives and Library Division, Special Collections Section, box 2, fd. 19 (hereafter cited as Evers Papers).
17. Christopher Metress, “Truth Be Told: William Bradford Huie’s Emmett Till Cycle,” Southern Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 48.
18. See, for example, Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, January 11, 1956, 6; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 11, 1956, 11.
19. Deirdre Coakley, “Keeper of the Flame: William Bradford Huie’s Widow, Martha Hunt Huie, Works to Get His Work Back in Print,” Gadsden (Ala.) Times, October 9, 2001, B4–B5. The Revolt of Mamie Stover, released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1956, starred Jane Russell in the title role. The Execution of Private Slovik was a 1974 made-for-TV movie featuring Martin Sheen and his young son Charlie. The others were Wild River (1960), The Outsider (1961), The Americanization of Emily (1964), and Klansman (1974).
20. David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993), 434; Bob Ward, “William Bradford Huie Paid for Their Sins,” Writer’s Digest 54, no. 9 (September 1974): 16–22.
21. William Bradford Huie, Wolf Whistle, and Other Stories (New York: New American Library, 1959), 16–17.
22. William Bradford Huie to Roy Wilkins, October 12, 1955, William Bradford Huie Papers, Cms 84, box 38, fd. 353a, Ohio State University Library, Columbus (hereafter cited as Huie Papers).
23. Huie to Wilkins, October 12, 1955.
24. William Bradford Huie to Basil Walters, October 18, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
25. Huie to Wilkins, October 12, 1955.
26. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 17, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a; Huie to Walters, October 18, 1955.
27. Huie to Mitch, October 17, 1955.
28. Huie to Walters, October 18, 1955.
29. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 21, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
30. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 23, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a; William Bradford Huie, interview, conducted by Blackside, Inc., August 3, 1979, for Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/.
31. Huie to Mitch, October 23, 1955.
32. Ellen Whitten, “Justice Unearthed: Revisiting the Murder of Emmett Till” (Honor’s thesis, Rhodes College, 2005), 17. http://www.rhodes.edu/images/content/Academics/Ellen_Whitten.pdf.
33. As two researchers into the Till case see it, “Increasingly do we now realize that Huie had been bamboozled and Look hoodwinked” (Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009], 151). Although that is one possibility, it seems to me that Huie was not deceived by Milam and Bryant, but backed off of the story for the reasons I cite above.
34. Huie to Walters, October 18, 1955.
35. William Bradford Huie to Dan Mitch, October 25, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
36. Huie, interview, for Eyes on the Prize.
37. John W. Milam, signed release; Carolyn Bryant, signed release, both in Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353b.
38. Milam, signed release; Bryant, signed release.
39. Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (New York: Putnam, 1977), 388.
40. Milam, signed release.
41. Milam, signed release; Bryant, signed release.
42. Huie, Wolf Whistle, 38–41.
43. John W. Whitten Jr. to William Bradford Huie, November 2, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353b.
44. William Bradford Huie, “The Shocking Story of an Approved Killing in Mississippi,” Look, January 24, 1956, 46–50.
45. Roy Wilkins to Branch Officers, January 6, 1956, Evers Papers, box 2, fd. 19.
46. Congressional Record, January 12, 1956, Appendix, A247–49 http://www.heinonline.org; “Rep. Diggs Comments in Congress on Look’s Story about the Emmett Till Case,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 19.
47. Congressional Record, January 16, 1956, Appendix, A337 http://www.heinonline.org; “S-T’s Reply to Look Read to Congressmen,” Jackson State Times, January 17, 1956, 1A, as quoted in Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 49.
48. Congressional Record, January 17, 1956, 697, and Appendix, A387–38 http://www.heinonline.org; “Negro’s Answer to Look Story,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 18, 1956, 8.
49. Susan M. Weill, “Mississippi’s Daily Press in Three Crises,” in The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement, ed. David R. Davies (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 28. In his 1954 editorial, as quoted in Weill, Lee said: “Southern Negroes may lose a lot more than they gain. Integration in the North and East is not a howling success. This movement to integrate the schools of the South is loaded with more racial dynamite than appears on the surface and the Negro will be the one who is blown away.”
50. “Son No Braggart, Says Mrs. Bradley,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1956, 1, 2.
51. “What Milam, Bryant Say of Huie Story,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 19; “Milam Hires Sumner, Miss., Lawyer—Says He May Sue Look Magazine,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 14, 1956, 3; “Till Exposé by Writer Shakes Dixie,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1956, 2.
52. Jay Milner, “Milam Says He’s ‘Not Sure’ If He Has Grounds for Libel Suit,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 15, 1956, 1.
53. W. C. Shoemaker, author telephone interview, August 20, 2010.
54. “What Huie Says,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 19.
55. “Ask New Till Probe,” Birmingham (Ala.) World, January 21, 1956, 1; “Ask New Indictment in Till Kidnap Case,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 21, 1956, 2. Four years after “Shocking Story” appeared, Huie said that Wilkins and his wife read the article and considered it to be “fair” (Huie, Wolf Whistle, 45).
56. “‘Too Busy’ to Reopen Till Kidnap Case, Judge Says,” Washington Afro-American, January 21, 1956, 11.
57. James L. Hicks, open letter to US Attorney General Herbert Brownell and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, in “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” Washington Afro-American, November 19, 1955, 4, 14, reprinted in Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 194–99.
58. “Recall the Murders in Mississippi,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 24, 1955, 6, and Washington Afro-American, December 17, 1955, 1, 2; “Writer Challenges Brownell to Act in Till Kidnap-Murder Case,” Baltimore Afro-American, 2.
59. “Writer Challenges Brownell,” 2.
60. “Justice Dept. Says ‘No’ to New Probe into Till Murder,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), February 12, 1956, 22.
61. Huie, Wolf Whistle, 45; Thornton, “Murder of Emmett Till,” 99.
62. “Bombshell in the Till Case,” New York Post, January 11, 1956, 1; “New Angle to Till Case,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, January 11, 1956, 4, both quoted in Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 48–49.
63. “Till Case Film Rights Secured,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 19, 1956, 29.
64. “Milam, Bryant Sign for Till Case Movie,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 28, 1956, 1.
65. “Milam, Bryant Sign for Till Case Movie,” 1.
66. Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 389; Sharon Monteith, “The Murder of Emmett Till in the Melodramatic Imagination: William Bradford Huie and Vin Packer in the 1990s,” in Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, ed. Harriet Pollack and Christopher Metress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 36; Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 60–61.
67. William Bradford Huie, “What’s Happened to the Emmett Till Killers,” Look, January 22, 1957, 63–66, 68.
68. “Say Coleman Cites NAACP, Diggs for Till Case Outcome,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 12, 1956, 1, 2; “Coleman and Look at Odds on Till Case,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 13, 1956, 1–2.
69. “Coleman and Look at Odds,” 1–2.
70. Metress, “Truth Be Told,” 50; Dave Tell, “The ‘Shocking Story’ of Emmett Till and the Politics of Public Confession,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 2 (May 2008): 158. Tell has detailed Huie’s “Shocking Story” and its evolution into a confessional piece, while pointing out that neither Huie nor Milam and Bryant intended the article to be one. In his book on public confession, Tell analyzes the story further and asks, “So how is it that despite Huie’s excisions . . . despite the intentions of the author, the killers, and their lawyers, the ‘Shocking Story’ is nearly universally remembered as a confession? . . . The answer will come as no surprise: the ‘Shocking Story’ became a confession because, politically speaking, it needed to be one.” See Dave Tell, Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 66.
71. David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 150. I am grateful to the Beitos for making this source known and for their thoughtful analysis.
72. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant in Confession Story,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), January 14, 1956, 2; Huie, “Shocking Story,” 50; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 271n6.
73. Huie to Mitch, October 21, 1955.
74. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant,” 1, 2.
75. David A. Shostak, “Crosby Smith: Forgotten Witness to a Mississippi Nightmare,” Negro Bulletin 38, no. 1 (December 1974–January 1975): 321.
76. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant,” 2.
77. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant,” 2; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 151–52. Reed denied this possible scenario both to the Beitos and to me. Willie Reed, author interview, February 6, 2007.
78. See Amos Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear Emmett Till Whistle,” California Eagle, January 26, 1956, 1–2, 4; Amos Dixon, “Milam Master-Minded Emmett Till Killing,” California Eagle, February 2, 1956, 1–2; Amos Dixon, “Till Case: Torture and Murder,” California Eagle, February 9, 1956, 1–2; Amos Dixon, “Till Case: Torture and Murder,” California Eagle, February 16, 1956, 1–2; Amos Dixon, “South Wins Out in Till Lynching Trial,” California Eagle, February 23, 1956, 2.
79. Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear,” 1.
80. Olive Arnold Adams, Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till (Mound Bayou, Miss: Regional Council of Negro Leadership, 1956), 15–21.
81. T. R. M. Howard, “Stark Terror Reigns in Mississippi Delta,” Washington Afro-American, October 1, 1955, 19; T. R. M. Howard, “Terror Reigns in Mississippi,” speech delivered October 2, 1955, Baltimore, Washington Afro-American, October 1, 1955, 19, and Baltimore Afro-American, October 8, 1955, 6, reprinted in Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, eds., Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965 (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2006), 125–27; “Dr. Howard: Situation in Mississippi Extremely Serious,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 8, 1955, 4.
82. Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 25–29; T. R. M. Howard, foreword, in Adams, Time Bomb, 6–7.
83. Chester Washington, “Howard Locates Two Men,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 15, 1955.
84. Linda Beito, telephone interview with Henry Lee Loggins, July 21, 2001, transcript in author’s possession.
85. Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear,” 2; Dixon, “Milam Master-Minded,” 1–2; Adams, Time Bomb, 19–20.
86. Hicks, “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” 4; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 195–96.
87. Dixon, “Till Case: Torture and Murder,” February 9, 1956, 2.
88. “Dr. Howard Is Selling Property,” Washington Afro-American, December 17, 1955, 1–2; Beito and Beito, Black Maverick, 163.
89. Price to Rosen, February 29, 1956; Office memorandum from Mr. [F. L.] Price to Mr. [Alex] Rosen, March 1, 1956, FBI FOIA release to Devery S. Anderson, 2006, re Emmett Till (hereafter cited as FBI file on Emmett Till).
90. Office memorandum from F. L. Price to the Director [J. Edgar Hoover], February 29, 1956, FBI file on Emmett Till.
91. Louis E. Lomax, “Henry Loggins Found, but Refuses to Leave Jail Cell,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 12, 1955, 8; Louis E. Lomax, “Milam Jails His Handyman,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 20, 1956, 5. During his interview with Keith Beauchamp for the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005), Loggins mentioned that Milam had accused him of stealing iron and that he had spent six months in jail. In the film, Loggins professed his innocence of the charges.
92. Lomax, “Henry Loggins Found,” 8.
93. Lomax, “Milam Jails His Handyman,” 5.
94. “Audience Donates to Till Witness,” Chicago Defender, March 17, 1956, 10.
95. Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper, 1959), 127.
1. Mamie Till-Mobley, author telephone interview, December 3, 1996.
2. “Mrs. Bradley Bares Dawson Aid,” Daily Defender (Chicago), October 22, 1956, 1; “Till’s Mother Says Ike Ignored Pleas for Help,” Chicago Defender, November 3, 1956, 1; Alfred Duckett, “Adlai in Tribute to Dr. Johnson,” Chicago Defender, November 10, 1956, 10.
3. “People and Places,” Chicago Defender, December 8, 1956, 2; Ethel L. Payne, “‘Ladies’ Day for Adlai Lures Smart Set from All Over to Dine, Chat,” Chicago Defender, November 3, 1956, 15.
4. “The Till Case People One Year Later,” Ebony 5, no. 11 (October 1956): 69; Chester Higgins, “Mrs. Bradley Becomes a Teacher,” Jet 17, no. 18 (September 1, 1960): 13–15; Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 217–29, 251, 254.
5. Higgins, “Mrs. Bradley Becomes a Teacher,” 16; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 225, 228, 270–72; Mamie Till-Mobley, biographical summary (Emmett Till Foundation, November 1994), copy in author’s possession.
6. “Look Sued for Million Libel by Till’s Mother,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 22, 1958, 8; “Emmett Till’s Mother Sues Look,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 23, 1958, 14; “Emmett Till’s Mom Loses Libel Suit,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), June 23, 1959, 2; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 215–16.
7. “Mother Says Son Libeled by Stories,” Daily Defender (Chicago), January 22, 1958, 3; “Dismiss Appeal by Till’s Mother,” Daily Defender (Chicago), May 17, 1960, A2; “Appeal Till Case to High Court,” Daily Defender (Chicago), October 4, 1960, 2.
8. Till-Mobley, author telephone interview; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 232.
9. “Till’s Mother Marches,” caption under photo, Jet 39, no. 4 (October 29, 1970): 33.
10. “Emmett Till Foundation Holds Annual Banquet,” Daily Defender (Chicago), July 25, 1966, 8; Emmett Till Foundation, Statement of Mission and Purpose, copy in author’s possession.
11. Till-Mobley, author telephone interview; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 242–43.
12. “Time Heals Few Wounds for Emmett Till’s Mother,” Jet 66, no. 5 (April 9, 1984): 55–56.
13. Till-Mobley, biographical summary.
14. Douglas Kreutz, “Hundreds Watch Unveiling of King Statue in City Park,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver), September 6, 1976, 6; Dave Curtain, “Repaired Statue Renews Legacy of Rights Battles,” Denver Post, May 15, 2005, A1. Ten months after the statue dedication, Ed Rose filed a $35,000 lawsuit against the Denver-backed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation for money it still owed him. The foundation countersued Rose, saying that the statue did not resemble King, and that because of Rose’s “poor workmanship” and “lackadaisical approach,” the foundation lost out on a $10,000 bicentennial grant and $15,000 in other expected donations. On top of this, Philip Schiavo, president of Roman Bronze Work, the Corona, New York, foundry that cast the statue, began demanding the $13,500 he was still owed, and threatened to go to Denver City Park and “start to chop the statue down and let the police arrest me.” The foundation eventually paid Rose his remaining commission. The sculpture was later replaced with a $700,000 statue of King alone, and the Rose sculpture was donated to the Martin Luther King Cultural Center in Pueblo, Colorado, in 2002. Since the move, the statue has been vandalized with racist graffiti, and in April 2005, an arm on one of the figures was nearly severed. The sculpture was repaired and rededicated in May 2005 (Curtain, “Repaired Statue Renews Legacy,” A1). Rose died in 2009 at age sixty-four. See “King Statue Center of Dispute,” Greeley (Colo.) Tribune, July 6, 1977, 1; Cinder Parmenter, “Overdue Bills Endanger Bronze of King,” Denver Post, July 7, 1977, 17; Virginia Culver, “Statue Stirred Controversy,” Denver Post, May 7, 2009, A-08.
15. Kreutz, “Hundreds Watch Unveiling,” 6; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 247–48.
16. Fred Grim, “Memorial to Honor Civil Rights Martyrs,” Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), July 31, 1988, 1D; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 257–59; Morris Dees, with Steve Fiffer, A Lawyer’s Journey: The Morris Dees Story (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2001), 333–34; D. Michael Cheers, “Dedicate Memorial to 40 Who Died in Civil Rights Struggle,” Jet 77, no. 7 (November 20, 1989): 4–16.
17. “Chicago’s 71st Street Is Renamed for Emmett Till,” Jet 80, no. 17 (August 12, 1991): 4–5; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 260.
18. Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 268–70; Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 896–97. For more on the original Selma marches, see Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987); John Lewis, with Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998); Townsend Davis, Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); J. Mills Thornton III, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002).
19. James Janega and Mathew Walberg, “Mamie Till-Mobley, 1921–2003,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 7, 2003, 2C; Clarence Page, “Black History Isn’t Just for Blacks Anymore,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 15, 2003, 1.
20. “Mamie Till-Mobley, Civil Rights Heroine, Eulogized in Chicago,” Jet 103, no. 5 (January 27, 2003): 14, 18, 52.
21. Till-Mobley, author telephone interview.
22. “Mamie Till-Mobley, Civil Rights Heroine,” 52.
23. As two scholars note, “lynching images, such as those of Emmett Till, are too visually provocative, too viscerally challenging, to be contained by time or distance” (Christine Harold and Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 [Summer 2005]: 266).
24. Wheeler Parker Jr., Crosby Smith Jr., and Simeon Wright, author interview, February 7, 2007, Argo, Ill., comments by Wright.
25. Simeon Wright, with Herb Boyd, Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), 86.
26. “Till Case People,” 68, 72.
27. William Parker, author telephone interview, April 30, 2014.
28. William Parker, author telephone interview; Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Wright; Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 87.
29. William Parker, author telephone interview; Martha Wright Baker, author telephone interview, May 5, 2014. Baker is the daughter of Will Wright.
30. William Parker, author telephone interview.
31. Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Wright.
32. William Parker, author telephone interview; Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 99; “Rites Held Saturday for Moses Wright, 85,” Chicago Defender, August 8, 1977, 2.
33. William Parker, author telephone interview; Confidential source E to author, August 15, 2011.
34. William Parker, author telephone interview.
35. Mary Sanchez, “Murder’s Horror Haunts the Living,” Kansas City Star, April 20, 2004, B7.
36. David A. Shostak, “Crosby Smith: Forgotten Witness to a Mississippi Nightmare,” Negro Bulletin 38, no. 1 (December 1974–January 1975): 321.
37. George Curry, “Killed for Whistling at a White Woman,” Emerge, August 1995, 27.
38. Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Parker.
39. Sanchez, “Murder’s Horror,” B7; Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 94; Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Wright.
40. Clenora Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement, 4th ed. (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2006), 134.
41. Wheeler Parker Jr., author telephone interview, October 1, 2007.
42. Argo Temple Church of God in Christ 80-Year Celebration, program distributed for event held October 8, 2006, 2.
43. Shostak, “Crosby Smith,” 325.
44. Joe Atkins, “Slain Chicago Youth Was a ‘Sacrificial Lamb,’” Jackson Clarion–Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 20A; Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Smith.
45. Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Parker and Wright.
46. Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Parker.
47. Willie Reed, author interview, February 6, 2007, Chicago.
48. Reed, author interview; Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Parker.
49. Reed, author interview.
50. “Till Case People,” 72; Reed, author interview.
51. Reed, author interview.
52. Becky Schlikerman, “Emmett Till Witness ‘Never Got Over’ Case,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 24, 2013, 13; Margalit Fox, “Willie Louis, Who Named the Killers of Emmett Till at Their Trial, Dies at 76,” New York Times, July 24, 2013, A25; Emily Langer, “Witness Dared to Testify in Emmett Till Lynching,” Washington Post, July 25, 2013, A6; Naomi Nix, “Willie Louis: 1937–2013,” Chicago Tribune, July 24, 2013, 6.
53. Reed, author interview.
54. Langer, “Witness Dared to Testify,” A6.
55. Reed, author interview; Add Reed death certificate, Cook County, Illinois, Death Records, state file no. 606929, filed March 27, 1977.
56. “World Eyes Mississippi Grand Jury,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1955, 2; Lee Blackwell, “Two Who Fled Mississippi Tell Stories,” Chicago Defender, October 1, 1955, 1–2. The papers referred to Brooks as Mandy Bradley’s granddaughter, but a confidential source told me that Brooks is indeed Bradley’s daughter. Confidential source D, author telephone interview, June 6, 2014.
57. “Ticker Tape U.S.A.,” Jet 9, no. 11 (January 19, 1956): 13; “Till Case People,” 68, 72.
58. Confidential source D, author telephone interview.
59. “3 Who Refused to Testify Have Dropped Out of Sight,” Jet 13, no. 25 (April 24, 1958): 11, 13.
60. “3 Who Refused,” 12–13.
61. Marsha Gaston, author telephone interview, February 17, 2014; “3 Who Refused,” 12–13.
62. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Prosecutive Report of Investigation Concerning . . . Emmett Till, Deceased, Victim, February 9, 2006, 29 (hereafter cited as Prosecutive Report; names of living people are redacted in the report); Clint Gaston and Treola Collins, marriage certificate, King County, Washington, filed August 10, 1960, no. 245340; Gaston, author telephone interview. While serving in the military, Wheeler Parker met one of Levi Collins’s nieces, who told Parker that her uncle eventually “lost his mind” (Parker, Smith, and Wright, author interview, comments by Parker; Richard A. Serrano, “After 49 years, Case Reopened in Racial Slaying of Emmett Till,” Oakland [Calif.] Tribune, May 11, 2004, 1).
63. Gaston, author telephone interview.
64. Gaston, author telephone interview.
65. David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 151–52; Henry Lee Loggins, telephone interview with Linda Beito, July 21, 2001, transcript in author’s possession; “Man’s Father May Have Been Involved in Terrible History of Small Mississippi Town,” Lodi (Calif.) News-Sentinel, August 10, 2005, 7.
66. “Man’s Father,” 7.
67. “Gerald Chatham Dies,” New York Times, October 11, 1956, 39.
68. Tom Brennan, “World Watched Drama Unfold in Rural County Courtroom,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 2H; Gerald Chatham Oral History Interview (OH293), courtesy of Charles W. Capps Jr. Archives and Museum, Delta State University, Cleveland, Miss.; Gerald Chatham Sr., author interview, February 24, 2012, Hernando, Miss.
69. David Brown, “Sumner Revisited: How Several Lives Altered by Till Trial,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), August 19, 1956, 7. The letters that Chatham received were donated to Delta State University in 2005 by his family.
70. “Prosecutor in Till Case Dies Tuesday,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), October 10, 1956, 1; Maria Burnham, “Till Case Is Also About Attorney,” Desoto (Miss.) Appeal (Southhaven, Miss.), May 4, 2004, DS1; “Adjourn in Honor of Gerald Chatham,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), October 11, 1956, 3.
71. “Charleston Banker Drowns in Enid Lake,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, September 4, 1962, 8.
72. Danny McKenzie, “Ripley Attorney Played Major Role in Till Case,” Tupelo (Miss.) Daily Journal, September 21, 2003, 1A.
73. “Prominent Local Attorney Dies,” Southern Sentinel (Ripley, Miss.), December 7, 1967, 1; Jak and Bruce Smith Oral History Interview (OH289), comments by Bruce Smith, courtesy of Charles W. Capps Jr. Archives and Museum. Sadly, Bruce Smith died in an auto accident on August 13, 2014.
74. “Heart Attack Is Fatal to Sumner Attorney,” Mississippi Sun (Charleston, Miss.), June 30, 1966, 1.
75. “Jesse Breland Dies at 80,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, March 26, 1969, 1.
76. J. W. Kellum and Amzie Moore, interview, conducted by Blackside, Inc., August 29, 1979, for Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/, comments by Kellum.
77. Richard Rubin, “The Ghosts of Emmett Till,” New York Times, July 31, 2005, F33.
78. Kellum and Moore, interview, for Eyes on the Prize.
79. “Attorney J. W. Kellum Dies,” Charleston (Miss.) Sun-Sentinel, July 25, 1996, 1.
80. Rubin, “Ghosts of Emmett Till,” F33; “Attorney J. W. Kellum Dies,” 1.
81. Betty Pearson, author interview, February 6, 2006, Sumner, Miss.
82. Brennan, “World Watched Drama Unfold,” 2H.
83. Paul Hendrickson, “Mississippi Haunting,” Washington Post Magazine, February 27, 2000, 26, reprinted in Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 185.
84. Plater Robinson, The Murder of Emmett Till, Soundprint, copy of audio in author’s possession, http://soundprint.org/radio/display_show/ID/398/name/The+Murder+of+Emmett+Till.
85. “Retired Attorney John Whitten Dies,” Charleston (Miss.) Sun-Sentinel, February 2003.
86. Robert H. Henderson Sr. obituary, Charleston (Miss.) Sun-Sentinel, October 11, 2007, 3.
87. “White Jurors Acquit Sheriff of Bludgeoning,” Morgantown (Miss.) Post, August 8, 1958, 3.
88. “Judge Swango’s Rites Held on Saturday,” Batesville (Miss.) Panolian, December 12, 1968, 1; Chatham, author interview. For more on the sanatorium and its influence, see Ashley Baggett, “The Rise of the Surgical Age in the Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Case Study of the Mississippi State Sanatorium” (Master’s thesis, Louisiana State University, 2003).
89. Al Kuetiner, “Till Case Rarely Discussed at Site of Famous Murder Trial,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 4, 1957, 15.
90. “Former Sheriff Dies; Served Two Terms,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, October 9, 1975, 1. For an account of Cothran’s term as sheriff (1960–64), see Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy (New York: Knopf, 2003), 83–113.
91. “Former Sheriff Dies,” 1; “John Ed Cothran, 1914–2008; Investigated 1955 Death of Emmett Till,” Chicago Tribune, March 21, 2008, 9; “John Ed Cothran; Investigated Till Killing,” Washington Post, March 20, 2008, B7.
92. Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study of Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case” (Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 1963), 164–65, reprinted as Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Murder and Trial of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 213.
93. “Ross Found Guilty, Faces Huge Fine,” Laurel (Miss.) Leader Call, September 29, 1962, 1, 2.
94. “Lee County Runoff Vote Is Scheduled,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), February 17, 1965, 6; “H. C. Strider Dies on Hunt,” Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register, December 28, 1970, 13.
95. “Mississippian Says He Paid for Votes,” New York Times, July 6, 1968, 8; Wilson F. Minor, author interview, August 24, 2009, Jackson, Miss.
96. “Two Delta Senators Offer Negro Relocation Measure,” Hattiesburg (Miss.) American, February 25, 1966, 1. Crook would later represent Roy Bryant in a federal criminal case. This is discussed later in this chapter.
97. “H. C. Strider Dies,” 13.
98. “JBW Attends Funerals,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), December 29, 1970, 10; Mississippi Code of 1972, as amended, http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/mscode/.
99. “Witness in Till Case Vanishes,” St. Louis Argus, October 28, 1955, 1, 10; Richard B. Henry, “Charges Milam Killed 4,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), January 21, 1956, 1, 2.
100. National Cemetery Administration. U.S. Veterans Gravesites, ca. 1775–2006 [database online], Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2006. California, Death Index, 1940–1997 [database on-line], Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000; http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=91930730&; www.umbcbarstow.com.
101. Brown, “Sumner Revisited,” 7.
102. William Bradford Huie, “What’s Happened to the Emmett Till Killers,” Look, January 22, 1957, 65–66.
103. Huie, “What’s Happened,” 66; “Till Trial Defendant Refused Gun Permit in Sunflower County,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 8, 1957, 1.
104. Whitaker, “Case Study in Southern Justice,” 161, reprint, 212.
105. Ygondine Sturdivant, author telephone interview, August 7, 2013.
106. “Ex-Farm Manager Freed in Till Murder Now in Bread Line,” New York Post, February 14, 1958, 20; “Till ‘Suspect’ on ‘Breadline,’” Pittsburgh Courier, February 22, 1958, 30; “J. W. Milam Denies Reports He Stood in Miss. Bread Line,” Jet 13, no. 18 (March 6, 1958): 6–7.
107. Photo and caption under the title “Honored at Reception,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), May 6, 1962, 16; Myrtle Thompson obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), June 23, 1963, 2; Albert Thompson obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 22, 1965, 2; Confidential source A, author telephone interview, April 7, 2014.
108. “City Court” section of Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 10, 1969, 2; May 10, 1972, 11; and August 30, 1972, 2.
109. Confidential source B, author telephone interview, June 8, 2014.
110. Joe Atkins and Tom Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past to ‘Stay Dead,’” Jackson Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 3H; John William Milam obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), January 2, 1981, 2A; Confidential source A, author telephone interview.
111. J. W. Milam’s obituary listed Juanita as his spouse at the time of his death. Certificate of Search sent to author from Marilyn Hansell, chancery clerk of Washington County, Mississippi, May 24, 2005, indicates that Hansell checked divorce records from 1965 to 1980 and found nothing for John W. and Juanita Milam. It was later confirmed to me that the couple remained together until J. W.’s death during my telephone interview with confidential source A.
112. Advertisement for National Beauty Salon Week, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), February 13, 1972, 17; “Television Raffle,” caption under photo, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), February 14, 1971, 20; “Delta Diary,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), October 2, 1973, 6; “Local Cosmetologists to Give Away Television,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), April 13, 1975, 15; Confidential source A, author telephone interview.
113. Confidential source A, author telephone interview.
114. Confidential source A, author telephone interview.
115. Confidential source A, author telephone interview.
116. Horace William Milam obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), October 9, 2008, A6; Mary Juanita Milam obituary, Biloxi-Gulfport (Miss.) Sun Herald, January 14, 2014, A4; Confidential source A, author telephone interview.
117. Roy Bryant obituary, Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 3, 1994, A14; Roy Bryant obituary, Bolivar Commercial (Cleveland, Miss.), September 6, 1994, 12; Bill Minor, “Saga of Till Slaying Will Live On Despite Death of 2nd Killer,” Jackson Clarion Ledger, September 25, 1994, C3.
118. “Ex-Farm Manager Freed in Till Murder,” 20; “Bryant Sought Job as Indianola Cop; He Didn’t Get It,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), May 2, 1956, 1; Huie, “What’s Happened,” 65; Atkins and Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past,” 1H; United States v. Roy Bryant Sr., CRG-83-55, copy of case file in author’s possession.
119. “Bryant Sought Job,” 1.
120. “Three Hurt in Collision Here on Sunday,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), November 19, 1956, 1; “Till Figure Injured in Auto Crash,” Chicago Defender, December 1, 1956, 1.
121. Comments of Carolyn Donham posted on her Facebook wall, November 19, 2010. Donham does not mention the accident but acknowledges in her comments that Frank Bryant would have turned fifty-four years old that day.
122. David Holmberg, “The Legacy of Emmett Till,” Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, September 4, 1994, 10A; Confidential source C, author interviews, August 19 and December 3, 2014.
123. Comments of Carolyn Donham on Linda Jean Bryant Facebook wall, April 7, 2013.
124. Vinton High School, Souvenir, 1970, 21; Comments of Thomas Lamar Bryant posted on “Memories of Vinton [Louisiana]” Facebook wall; “About,” on Carol Ann Bryant Facebook wall; Comments of Carolyn Donham posted on Linda Jean Bryant Facebook wall, June 26, 2014; www.huntingwithtom.com.
125. “Sunflower Success,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 19, 1974, 31; “About,” on Carol Ann Bryant Facebook wall; Carolyn Holloway Bryant v. Roy Bryant, Chancery Court of Sunflower County, Mississippi, complaint no. 16505, copy in author’s possession provided by Plater Robinson.
126. Comments of Carolyn Donham posted on Linda Jean Bryant Facebook wall, April 7, 2013.
127. Eula Bryant obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), August 27, 1974, 2; Carolyn Holloway Bryant v. Roy Bryant.
128. “Sunflower Voters Have Wide Choice,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), May 9, 1977, 12; “Sunflower Candidates Chosen,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), May 11, 1977, 12.
129. Darren, last name withheld, telephone interview with author, February 11, 2010.
130. Roy Bryant headstone, Lerhton Cemetery, Ruleville, Mississippi, includes his and Vera Jo’s marriage date; Vera Jo Bryant obituary, Bolivar Commercial (Cleveland, Miss.), May 3, 2012, 3.
131. United States v. Roy Bryant Sr., CRG-83-55.
132. United States v. Roy Bryant Sr., CRG-87-82; Holmberg, “Legacy of Emmett Till,” 10A.
133. The Samuels documentary is available at www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/till/till.html; Atkins and Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past,” 3H.
134. Atkins and Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past,” 1H–2H.
135. Clotye Murdock Larsson, “Land of the Till Murder Revisited,” Ebony 41, no. 5 (March 1986): 57.
136. Charles Ealy, “Mother of Teen Slain in ’55 Tries to Keep Case Alive,” Dallas Morning News, December 20, 1992, 16A; Holmberg, “Legacy of Emmett Till,” 10A.
137. Holmberg, “Legacy of Emmett Till,” 10A; Robinson, Murder of Emmett Till.
138. Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi, 11.
139. Holmberg, “Legacy of Emmett Till,” 10A.
140. Vera Jo Bryant obituary, 3. I confirmed that she was buried in the double plot she purchased with Roy Bryant during a visit to Lehrton Cemetery in Ruleville, Mississippi, on August 17, 2014.
141. Comments of Carolyn Donham posted on her Facebook wall, November 4, 2010.
142. Confidential source C, author interview, August 19, 2014; Comments of Carolyn Donham posted on her Facebook wall, November 19, 2010.
143. Comments of Carolyn Donham posted on her Facebook wall, November 9–10, 2010; Comments of Carolyn Donham and Carol Ann Bryant posted on Thomas Lamar Bryant Facebook wall, August 12–13, 2013.
144. Griffin Chandler and Madge Carolyn Holloway Bryant, marriage certificate, November 21, 1984, state file no. 123-84-25327, Mississippi State Department of Health Vital Records; Griffin Chandler obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), May 5, 1988, 3A; Confidential source C, author interview, December 3, 2014.
145. David Alford Donham obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), April 11, 2002, A5; Confidential source C, author interviews, August 19 and December 3, 2014.
146. Comments of Carolyn Donham posted on her Facebook wall, November 11, 2010; Confidential source C, author interview, December 3, 2014.
147. Confidential source C, author interview, December 3, 2014.
148. Confidential source C, author interviews, August 19 and December 3, 2014. I first learned that Carolyn Donham and her daughter-in-law were writing a book together when Carolyn’s granddaughter, Rachael Bryant, revealed that fact on the History News Network blog on April 13, 2008, in four separate posts: “There is a book coming out soon about the case. Look for it in about a year.” “I will not comment anymore about my Grandmother. She and my mom will be releasing a book in about a year. Look out for it.” “I will not comment to anything. Just look for a book to be out, written by my mom and biography of Carolyn. Be on the look out, maybe another year or so.” “My mom is in the process of getting Carolyn’s account published. Be on the look out. I will not comment on anything further.”
Rachel Bryant began posting comments on the site two years earlier to defend her grandmother against vicious and vitriolic attacks by other commentators. See comments under David T. Beito, “60 Minutes Story on Emmett Till Targets Carolyn Bryant,” History News Network, http://hnn.us/blog/8070. I have verified that Rachael Bryant is a granddaughter of Carolyn Donham and is the daughter of Thomas Lamar and Marsha Bryant, of Raleigh, North Carolina. In January 2011, Marsha Bryant told Davis Houck of Florida State University that nothing had been done on the book since Frank Bryant’s death in April 2010 (Davis Houck, telephone conversation with author, January 25, 2011).
1. John Anderson, “‘Till’ Reviews Social History Lesson, 30 Years Later,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1985, D1; “TV Highlights: New Night Court Characters,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1985, D11. Wilson, considered the best high school basketball player in the nation at the time of his death, is still being mourned and was the subject of a seventy-eight-minute documentary. See Amani Martin and Ed Schillinger, Benji: The True Story of a Life Cut Short (ESPN Films, 2012).
2. The documentary can currently be viewed at www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/till/till.html.
3. Joe Atkins, “Emmett Till: More Than a Murder,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 3H; Joe Atkins and Tom Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past to ‘Stay Dead,’” Jackson Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News, August 25, 1985, 1H.
4. See, for example, Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case” (Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 1963), reprinted as Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Murder and Trial of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005); Warren Breed, “Comparative Newspaper Handling of the Emmett Till Case,” Journalism Quarterly 35 (Summer 1958): 291–98; William M. Simpson, “Reflections on a Murder: The Emmett Till Case,” in Southern Miscellany: Essays in History in Honor of Glover Moore, ed. Frank Allen Dennis (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981), 177–200. On the dearth of scholarship on the Till case during this period, see Clenora Hudson, “The Unearthing of Emmett Till: A Compelling Process,” Iowa Alumni Review 41, no. 5 (October 1988): 18–23; Clenora Hudson-Weems, “Resurrecting Emmett Till: The Catalyst of the Modern Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (November 1998): 179–88.
5. Philip C. Kolin, “Forgotten Manuscripts: ‘Blues for Emmett Till’: The Earliest Extant Song about the Murder of Emmett Till,” African American Review 42, nos. 3–4 (Fall–Winter 2008): 455; Philip C. Kolin, “Haunting America: Emmett Till in Music and Song,” Southern Cultures (Fall 2009): 118–21. See also Christopher Metress, “‘No Justice, No Peace’: The Figure of Emmett Till in African American Literature,” MELUS 28, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 87–103.
6. Kolin, “Haunting America,” 119, 121; Frederick Bock, “A Prize Winning Poet Fails to Measure Up,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1960, C12; Mel Watkins, “Gwendolyn Brooks, 83, Passionate Poet, Dies,” New York Times, December 5, 2000, C22. For a chronological sampling of many of these literary efforts, see Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 291–345. For a study of the Brooks pieces, see Vivian M. May, “Maids Mild and Dark Villains, Sweet Magnolias and Sleeping Blood,” in Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, ed. Harriett Pollack and Christopher Metress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 98–111; Laura Dawkins, “It Could Have Been My Son: Maternal Empathy in Gwendolyn Brooks’s and Audre Lorde’s Till Poems,” in Pollack and Metress, Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, 112–27.
7. For the full story of Serling’s attempt to portray the Till murder on television, see Christopher Metress, “Submitted for Their Approval: Rod Serling and the Lynching of Emmett Till,” Mississippi Quarterly 61, nos. 1–2 (Winter/Spring 2008): 143–72. After Serling’s death, his wife, Carol, donated her husband’s papers to Ithaca College, where Serling had taught from 1967 until 1975. Carol Serling also served on the board of the school. The original version of “Noon at Tuesday” received its first public reading at Ithaca College in March 2008. See Rebecca James, “A Tale Too Explosive for ’50s TV,” Syracuse (N.Y.) Post Standard, March 27, 2008, D1–2.
8. James Baldwin, Blues for Mister Charlie (New York: Dial Books, 1964), dedication page and xiv; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 319–21; Claudia Cassidy, “Baldwin’s New Play: Abuse with Tom-Toms,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 10, 1964, J5; Lee A. Daniels, “James Baldwin, Eloquent Writer in Behalf of Civil Rights, Is Dead,” New York Times, December 2, 1987, A1; Howard Taubman, “Theater: Blues for Mister Charlie,” New York Times, April 24, 1964, 24; see also Brian Norman, “James Baldwin’s Unifying Polemic: Racial Segregation, Moral Integration, and the Polarizing Figure of Emmett Till,” in Pollack and Metress, Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, 75–97.
9. See, for example, Patrick Chura, “Prolepsis and Anachronism: Emmett Till and the History of To Kill a Mockingbird,” Southern Literary Journal 32, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 1–26. Chura notes that both the Till case and To Kill a Mockingbird “combine the dual icons of the ‘black rapist’ and concomitant fear of black male sexuality with mythologized vulnerable and sacred Southern womanhood.” Also, both trials include all-male, all-white juries, made up mostly of farmers; both juries reach verdicts against the black victim/defendant despite evidence to the contrary; in each instance, a fair-minded judge presided over the proceedings and a dedicated attorney (Gerald Chatham/Atticus Finch) sought justice for the black male involved. “In both cases,” continues Chura, “the black victim is a diminished physical specimen of a fully grown man. In both cases, the press or media emerge as a force for racial justice. In both cases, the concept of child murder figures prominently in the calculus of revenge for a racial and social shame of a class of poor Southern whites.”
10. Julius Thompson, “Till,” in Blues Said: Walk On (Houston: Energy Blacksouth Press, 1977), 9–11, reprinted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 321–23; Audre Lorde, “Afterimages,” Cream City Review 17, no. 2 (Fall 1981): 119–23, reprinted in Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 323–27; Dawkins, “It Could Have Been My Son,” 112–27. These and dozens of other Till-inspired works published into the new millennium are referenced in “Literary Representations of the Lynching of Emmett Till,” in Pollack and Metress, Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, 224–50.
11. Video and transcript available at NBC Learn K–12, http://archives.nbclearn.com; Atkins and Brennan, “Bryant Wants the Past,” 1H.
12. Lee Winfrey, “‘Eyes on Prize’ Recommended Viewing on Civil Rights History,” Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle-Telegram, January 21, 1987, B6; Ed Siegel, “Behind ‘Eyes on the Prize’ Henry Hampton Reflects on a Series 19 Years in the Making,” Boston Globe, January 21, 1987, 6; Joseph Pryweller, “Eyes on the Prize Author Has Won Respect for His Civil Rights Work,” Newport News (Va.) Daily Press, April 7, 1991, I1.
13. See interviews with Charles Diggs, November 6, 1986; James L. Hicks, November 2, 1985; William Bradford Huie, August 30, 1979; Rutha Mae Jackson and Willie Hill Jackson, August 29, 1979; Curtis Jones, November 12, 1985; J. W. Kellum and Amzie Moore, August 29, 1979; Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, November 7, 1985, gathered as part of Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965), Blackside, Inc., Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize.
14. Winfrey, “‘Eyes on Prize’ Recommended Viewing,” B6; Siegel, “Behind ‘Eyes on the Prize,’” 61; Julian Bond, email to author, October 18, 2013; Pryweller, “Eyes on the Prize Author,” I1. For the book, see Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking Press, 1988).
15. Pryweller, “Eyes on the Prize Author,” I1; Jesse McKinley, “Henry Hampton Dies at 58; Produced ‘Eyes on the Prize,’” New York Times, November 24, 1998, 10; “‘Eyes on the Prize’ Returns to PBS,” Washington Informer, September 28, 2006, 26; “‘Eyes on the Prize II’ Wins Three Golden Eagle Awards,” Los Angeles Sentinel, December 11, 1990, A8; “Landmark ‘Eyes on the Prize I and II’ Return to PBS,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 8, 1993, B3.
16. Stephen J. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (New York: Free Press, 1988), viii.
17. The dissertation appeared as Clenora Frances Hudson, “Emmett Till: The Impetus for the Modern Civil Rights Movement” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1988). For her published volume, see Clenora Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement (Troy, Mich.: Bedford Publishers, 1994). The book is currently in a revised fourth edition, which appeared in 2006 from AuthorHouse in Bloomington, Indiana. Hudson-Weems has alienated herself from other Emmett Till scholars by proclaiming that they have largely plagiarized her work. She has self-published two volumes in which she has aggressively yet erroneously put forth this claim. See Clenora Hudson-Weems, The Definitive Emmett Till: Passion and Battle of a Woman for Truth and Intellectual Justice (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2006); Clenora Hudson-Weems, Plagiarism: Physical and Intellectual Lynchings: An Emmett Till Continuum (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2007).
18. See Whitfield, Death in the Delta, 56–57; Hudson-Weems, Emmett Till, 12, 26.
19. Andrea Stone and Jerry Mitchell, “Evers Case Inspires Kin of Others,” USA Today, December 24, 1990, 3A.
20. Stone and Mitchell, “Evers Case Inspires Kin,” 3A; Tony Jones, “Cochran to Reopen Infamous Till Case,” Michigan Chronicle (Detroit), September 13, 1995, 1-A.
21. For more on the Evers case and subsequent conviction of Beckwith, see Bobby DeLaughter, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (New York: Scribner, 2001); Myrlie Evers-Williams, with Melinda Blau, Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999); Willie Morris, The Ghosts of Medgar Evers: A Tale of Race, Murder, Mississippi, and Hollywood (New York: Random House, 1998); Maryanne Vollers, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).
22. Tony Jones, “Cochran May Open Till Case,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), August 26–30, 1995, 1; “Johnnie Cochran May Reopen Emmett Till Murder Case,” San Francisco Sun-Reporter, December 14, 1995, 3.
23. Jones, “Cochran May Open Till Case,” 1.
24. “Johnnie Cochran May Reopen,” 3.
25. In his autobiography, published seven years after he announced his intentions, Cochran briefly mentioned the Till case but said nothing about any plans, current or former, for reopening it. See Johnnie Cochran, with David Fisher, A Lawyer’s Life (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), 111–12.
26. Mamie Till-Mobley, author telephone interview, December 3, 1996.
27. Keith Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Megan Scott, “Film Cracks Open ’55 Racial Slaying,” Ft. Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette, February 28, 2006, 2D; Connie Bloom, “Filmmaker Delivers Message on Injustice,” McClatchy-Tribune Business News, February 23, 2007, 1.
28. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014; “Takes Five; Keith Beauchamp,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 24, 2006, A2.
29. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Felicia R. Lee, “Directors Elated by Plan to Revisit 1955 Murder,” New York Times, May 12, 2004, B4; Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 277.
30. Dawn Turner Trice, “Renewed Focus on Till Case May Rewrite History,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2004, 2C; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
31. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014.
32. Scott, “Film Cracks Open,” 2D; Joe Neumaier, “Filmmaker’s ‘Untold Story’ Drives Inquiry in Racial Killing,” New York Daily News, August 16, 2005, 32; Patricia Poist, “Haunted by Ghost of Mississippi,” Lancaster (Pa.) Sunday News, January 16, 2005, 1; Dawn Turner Trice, “Renewed Focus on Till Case May Rewrite History,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2004, 2C.
33. David Holmberg, “The Legacy of Emmett Till,” Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, September 4, 1994, 10A.
34. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
35. Ali Rahman, “Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” New York Amsterdam News, November 21, 2002, 4.
36. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014.
37. Chris Jones, “Chronicle of a Life Untold: Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” BET Weekend, October 1999, 4; Christopher Benson, “Troubled Waters,” Chicago, September 1999, 26; Chris Jones, “Everyone’s Child,” Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1999, S5, 10; Richard Christiansen, “Reviving the Power of the Till Tragedy,” Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1999, 1–2.
38. Mamie Till-Mobley and David Barr III, The Face of Emmett Till (Woodstock, Ill.: Dramatic Publishing, 1999), 329–31.
39. Beauchamp, author telephone interviews, November 10, 2013, and February 2, 2014; Bobby DeLaughter, email to author, June 20, 2014.
40. Kam Williams, “Discourse with the Director of Award-Winning Emmett Till Documentary,” Washington Informer, October 13, 2005, 15.
41. William Nunnelley, “Metress Hopes Book on Emmett Till Will Clear Up Some Misconceptions,” January 24, 2003, http://www.samford.edu/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=21474841550#.U-RjEPldXup.
42. See Chris Crowe, Mississippi Trial, 1955 (New York: Phillis Fogelman Books, 2002). In January 2003, Crowe published a nonfiction title, Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Murder (New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2003). Crowe had actually stumbled across the Emmett Till case in 1998 while conducting research for his book Presenting Mildred D. Taylor (New York: Twayne, 1999). Taylor made a reference to the Till murder in one of her essays, which piqued Crowe’s curiosity. What he learned set him on a course for a new project. Once he finished the Taylor book, he began working on a book on Emmett Till, even interviewing Mamie Till-Mobley over the telephone in the process. Jim Blasingame, “‘A Crime That’s So Unjust!’: Chris Crowe Tells About the Death of Emmett Till,” Alan Review 2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 22–24; Chris Crowe, author telephone interview, March 24, 2014; Crowe, Getting Away with Murder, 11. Two other noteworthy titles that appeared during the renewed interest in the Till case after the mid-1980s include not only fiction but poetry. See Lewis Nordan, Wolf Whistle: A Novel (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1993); Marilyn Nelson, A Wreath for Emmett Till (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).
43. Mamie Till-Mobley, author telephone interview, April 15, 2002; Till-Mobley and Benson, Death of Innocence, 278.
44. Rahman, “Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” 4.
45. Christopher Benson, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014.
46. “Mamie Till Mobley, Heroic Mother, Mourned,” People’s World, January 24, 2003, http://www.peoplesworld.org/mamie-till-mobley-heroic-mother-mourned; Rahman, “Emmett Till’s Mother Speaks,” 4. Around this time, Mississippi assistant attorney general Frank Spencer affirmed to journalists that “we welcome any evidence from any source that would let us know what happened there” (Rebecca Segall and David Holmberg, “Who Killed Emmett Till?,” Nation 276, no. 4 [February 3, 2003]: 38).
47. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Mike Small, author telephone interview, July 20, 2014; Mike Small, email to author, July 21, 2014.
48. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Segall and Holmberg, “Who Killed Emmett Till?,” 38.
49. Brent Staples, “The Murder of Emmett Louis Till, Revisited,” New York Times, November 11, 2002, A16.
50. Herb Boyd, “The Lynching of Emmett Till,” New York Amsterdam News, November 21, 2002, 4.
51. Stanley Nelson, author telephone interview, October 15, 2013; Ron Howell, “A Film with a Mission,” Newsday, January 20, 2003, B6.
52. See Stanley Nelson, prod., The Murder of Emmett Till (Firelight Media, 2002); Keith Beauchamp, prod., The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005).
53. Lee, “Directors Elated,” B4; Keith Beauchamp, online conversation with author, June 4, 2005, transcript in author’s possession; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
54. Howell, “Film with a Mission,” B6.
55. Nelson, author telephone interview; Howell, “Film with a Mission,” B6.
56. Bennie M. Currie, “Films, Books Revisit Saga of Slain Teen Emmett Till,” Kansas City Call, December 20–26, 2002, 4; Monroe Dodd, Pursuit of Truth (Kansas City, Mo.: Kansas City Library, 2014), 16.
57. Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013.
58. C. J. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” Pitch (Kansas City), March 23, 2006, 16; Drew Jubera, “Civil Rights–Era Murder Cases,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 3, 2007, A1; Laura Parker, “Perseverance Pays Off for Civil Rights Activist,” USA Today, March 19, 2007, A2; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 4–5, 7, 10.
59. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 17; Parker, “Perseverance Pays Off,” A2; Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, March 8, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 4–6.
60. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 17; Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 6–8.
61. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and March 8, 2014.
62. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and March 8, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 16.
63. Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 6–7. Donald Burger died in 2010 at age seventy.
64. Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 13, 17; Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013; Benson, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 16.
65. Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013.
66. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and June 17, 2014; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
67. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and March 8, 2014; Segall and Holmberg, “Who Killed Emmett Till?,” 38.
68. Bob Longino, “The Unfinished Story of Emmett Till,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 5, 2003, A1; Bob Longino, “Ceremony Today for Till’s Mother,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 8, 2003, B1.
69. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
70. Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013.
71. Bob Longino, “Lynching Victim Mom Dies on Eve of Atlanta Visit,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 7, 2003, A1.
72. Benson, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014.
73. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
74. Longino, “Lynching Victim Mom Dies,” A1; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
75. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, March 8, 2014.
76. Bob Longino, “Emmett Till Documentary Previewed at King Center,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 26, 2003, C2; Bob Longino, “Telling Till’s ‘Untold Story,’” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 24, 2003, E5.
77. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Longino, “Telling Till’s ‘Untold Story,’” E5.
78. Timothy R. Brown, “Till Film Up for Emmy Tonight,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 13, 2003, 2B; “Documentary on Till Murder Wins Emmy,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, September 15, 2003, 1A.
79. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
80. Sykes, author telephone interview, March 8, 2014.
81. Alvin Sykes, email to author, May 8, 2014.
82. Alvin Sykes, email to Mehmet Yaşar İşcan, n.d., copy in author’s possession.
83. Mehmet Yaşar İşcan to Alvin Sykes, April 25, 2003, copy in author’s possession.
84. Sykes, email to author.
85. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, February 2, 2014; Sykes, author telephone interview, March 8, 2014; William Bradford Huie, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,” Look, January 24, 1956, 47.
86. Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013; Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 13, 15; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 17.
87. Dylan Grayson, “Sykes: It’s Not too Late for Truth,” Guilfordian, February 16, 2007, http://www.guilfordian.com/archives/2007/02/16/sykes-its-not-too-late-for-truth; Janovy, “Justice at Last,” 13, 15; Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013. For the Scalia opinion and how it applied both in 1976 and 1998, go to http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/1998/04/31/op-olc-v022-p0061.pdf.
88. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and March 8, 2014.
89. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Jerry Walker, “Emmett Till Murder Case Presented to Delegates of the United Nations,” Kansas City Call, June 6–12, 2003, 3.
90. Mary Sanchez, “Activist Enlists Evers Family to Solve Emmett Till Case,” Charleston (W.Va.) Sunday Gazette-Mail, June 22, 2003, 9A; Sykes, author telephone interview, March 8, 2014.
91. Vernon Jarrett, “Emmett Till’s Mom Speaks Again,” Chicago Defender, October 15, 2003, 2; Benson, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014.
92. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
93. Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013.
94. John Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown: True Crime Stories from a Federal Prosecutor in Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 222–23; John Hailman, author telephone interview, June 21, 2014; John Hailman, email to author, July 2, 2014; Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and June 12, 2014. Hailman incorrectly wrote that Sykes’s meeting with the Civil Rights Division occurred in August 2003.
95. Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 223–24; Hailman, author telephone interview.
96. Janovy, “Justice at Last?,” 15.
97. Drew Jubera, “Duty Outweighs Emotion for DA in Till Case,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 5, 2006, A1; Laura Parker, “DA Has Tough, Final Call in Till Case,” USA Today, March 22, 2006, A3.
98. Janovy, “Justice at Last?,” 15; Jim Greenlee, author telephone interview, March 11, 2014; Hailman, author telephone interview; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 17.
99. Greenlee, author telephone interviews, March 11 and July 28, 2014; Hailman, author telephone interview; Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 226.
100. Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014; Hailman, author telephone interview.
101. Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 224; Hailman, author telephone interview; Laura Parker, “Justice Pursued for Emmett Till,” USA Today, March 11, 2004, A3.
102. Jerry Mitchell, “Filmmaker to Show Movie on Emmett Till,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, February 7, 2004, 1B; Bob Longino, “Group Seeks to Reopen Emmett Till Case,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 6, 2004, E2; Clarence Page, “A New Thaw Comes to a Very Old Case,” Newsday, March 31, 2004, A42; Greenlee, author telephone interviews, March 11 and July 28, 2014.
103. Sykes, author telephone interviews, August 17, 2013, and June 12, 2014.
104. Mitchell, “Filmmaker to Show Movie,” 1B; Jerry Mitchell, “Support Sought to Reopen Till Case,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, February 8, 2004, 5B.
105. Chinta Strausberg, “Smith’s Witnesses Tell Why U.S. Should Probe Till Case,” Chicago Defender, February 10, 2004, 3; Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014; Cate Plys, “The City Council Hears Alarms,” March 18, 2004, www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-city-council-hears-alarms/Content?oid=914872.
106. House Congressional Resolution 360, 108th Congress, 2nd Session, February 10, 2004, https://www.congress.gov/108/bills/hconres360/BILLS-108hconres360ih.pdf.
107. George E. Curry, “Justice Department Will Investigate Emmett Till Case,” Frost (Fort Wayne, Ind.), May 19–25, 2004, 3.
108. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013. Schumer later said that he met Beauchamp through Rev. A. R. Bernard of the Christian Cultural Center in New York City. See “Senators Schumer & Talent & Representative Rangel Hold a News Conference on the Investigation into the Murder of Emmett Till,” Political Transcript Wire, November 19, 2004, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-743021641.html.
109. For more on the Louima case, see Lynette Holloway, “Sharpton Says Brutality Issue Will Propel Him to a Victory,” New York Times, August 31, 1997, 27; Peter Noel, “The Battle for Abner Louima,” Village Voice, September 2, 1997, 35, 42; Fred Kaplan, “Ex-Officer Guilty of Lying in Louima Case,” Boston Globe, July 17, 2002, A2; William H. Rashbaum, “Police Officers Later Cleared in Louima Case Seek Jobs Back,” New York Times, December 12, 2002, B3; “Justice at Last,” New York Amsterdam News, April 6, 2006, 1; “Two Officers in Louima Case Again Seek Re-Instatement,” New York Times, October 7, 2006, B6; “Ex-Officer in Louima Case Is Freed from Halfway House,” New York Times, May 5, 2007, B2; Herb Boyd, “Louima: ‘God Is Good,’” New York Amsterdam News, August 16, 2007, 1.
110. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013; Karin Lipson, “The Agents for Justice, Documentary Filmmakers Go Beyond Telling the Story of Emmett Till’s Shocking Murder by Instigating a Reopening of the 1955 Case,” Newsday, May 23, 2004, C6; “1955 Race Killing, Film Inspires Lawmakers’ Call for Probe,” Newsday, April 14, 2004, A6.
111. Amita Neruukar, “Lawmakers Want 1955 Mississippi Murder Reopened,” cnn.com/2004/LAW/04/13/till.murder.case.
112. Longino, “Group Seeks to Reopen,” E2; Frank Lombardi, “Civil Rights Slay Plea Pols Urge Reopening of 1955 Till Case,” New York Daily News, April 7, 2004, 1.
113. Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014.
114. Curry, “Justice Department Will Investigate,” 3.
115. “Justice Will Investigate Till Murder Again,” CNN Live Event/Special, www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/10/se.02.html.
116. Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014.
117. Maria Newman, “U.S. to Reopen Investigation of Emmett Till’s Murder in 1955,” New York Times, May 10, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/national/10CND-TILL.html; Robert J. Garrity Jr., “Emmett Till Exhumation Is Crucial to a Just Resolution to This Case,” Tinley Park (Ill.) Daily Southtown, May 24, 2005.
118. Herb Boyd, “Till Case Reopened,” New York Amsterdam News, May 13, 2004, 1; Trice, “Renewed Focus on Till Case,” 2C; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013.
119. Keith Beauchamp, email to author, May 28, 2014.
120. Lee, “Directors Elated,” B4.
121. Eric Lichtblau and Andrew Jacobs, “U.S. Reopens ’55 Murder Case, Flashpoint of Civil Rights Era,” New York Times, May 11, 2004, A19; Tara Burghart, “Family of Slain Boy Relieved at Reopening,” Cincinnati Post, May 11, 2004, A2.
122. Lynda Edwards, “Residents of Mississippi Town Say Till Killing Not Often Discussed,” Times of Northwest Indiana (Munster), May 17, 2004, http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/residents-of-mississippi-town-say-till-killing-not-often-discussed/article_1720b867-8062-56eb-b8e2-2ae147616aba.html.
123. “Emmett Till: Blacks React to Reopening of Tragic Case,” Jet 105, no. 22 (May 31, 2004): 6, 8.
124. Lee, “Directors Elated,” B4.
125. Bob Longino, “Emmett Till Case Reopened,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 11, 2004, A1.
126. Nita Martin, “Don’t Spend Money on Till Case,” letter to the editor, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, May 25, 2004, 6A.
1. Dale R. Killinger, author telephone interview, April 29, 2014; Dale R. Killinger, email to author, September 15, 2014; Robert J. Garrity Jr., author telephone interview, July 7, 2014; “27-Year Veteran to Head Mississippi FBI Offices,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 30, 2004, D8; John Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown: True Crime Stories from a Federal Prosecutor in Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 227. The Greenville and Tupelo agencies have since closed, and currently there are seven resident agencies in Mississippi. Worthington went on to head homeland security for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.
2. Killinger, author telephone interview.
3. Dale R. Killinger remarks at panel discussion as part of Mississippi Delta Center’s Landmarks in American History and Culture, http://vimeo.com/74032741; Killinger, author telephone interview.
4. Killinger, author telephone interview.
5. Steve Ritea, “Opening Old Wounds,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 15, 2004, 1.
6. Killinger, author telephone interview.
7. I could not identify a man by the name of Willie Hemphill in Darling, or anywhere in Mississippi, who fit the description of the person interviewed by Ritea, an indication that Hemphill used a pseudonym during his interview. However, in an April 29, 2014, email to me, Ritea wrote that “if he was using a pseudonym, that was never disclosed to me.” Hemphill’s name is redacted in Killinger’s report because Hemphill was still living at the time. See Federal Bureau of Investigation, Prosecutive Report of Investigation Concerning . . . Emmett Till, Deceased, Victim, February 9, 2006, 48 (hereafter cited as Prosecutive Report).
8. Ritea, “Opening Old Wounds,” 1.
9. Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 227–28, 33; Hailman, author telephone interview; Garrity, author telephone interview.
10. Michael Radutzky, “The Murder of Emmett Till,” 60 Minutes (CBS, October 24, 2004).
11. Radutzky, “Murder of Emmett Till”; Clarence Page, “Full New Probe Needed in Till Murder,” Newsday, October 26, 2004, A40.
12. Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014.
13. This criticism that the report “promised far more than it delivered” was noted by the historians David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, in “Why the ‘60 Minutes’ Story on Emmett Till Was a Disappointment,” History News Network, http://hnn.us/article/8193.
14. Keith Beauchamp, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014; David Holmberg, “Murder of Emmett Till: New Developments,” MaximsNews Network, http://www.maximsnews.com/2005davidholmberg12may.htm.
15. Rebecca Segall and David Holmberg, “Who Killed Emmett Till?,” Nation 276, no. 9 (February 3, 2003): 38; David Holmberg, author telephone interview, July 1, 2014.
16. Jan Hillegas, “West Point ‘Desegregation’ Produces Violent Reactions,” Southern Patriot (New Orleans), February 1970; James H. Haddock to Governor John Bell Williams, February 3, 1970, both in Sovereignty Commission Online, http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom.
17. Jan Hillegas, email to author, July 7, 2014.
18. See “Miss. School Rift Brings Fire, Bombing, Shooting,” Jet 37, no. 19 (February 12, 1970): 4; “Jet Erred in Miss. Bombing, Shooting Story,” Jet 37, no. 25 (March 19, 1970): 4.
19. Prosecutive Report, 110–12. Because Gode Davis died in 2010, I thought Killinger might reveal to me that Davis was his source because the right to privacy does not extend to deceased individuals. However, Killinger declined to “confirm or deny who provided the FBI the information referenced” (Dale R. Killinger, email to author, July 22, 2014).
20. Prosecutive Report, 112. Betty Wilson’s name was redacted from the FBI report because she was still living at the time Killinger finished it on February 9, 2006. Betty Wilson died almost a year later, on February 6, 2007.
21. Prosecutive Report, 110–13.
22. In response to the Segall and Holmberg piece cited above, Gode Davis wrote a letter to the Nation in which he denied naming Billy Wilson as a source and accused the authors of “a number of errors, distortions, omissions by inference and untrue statements.” Davis acknowledged speaking with Holmberg twice in 2002 but said he never talked with Segall. Davis insisted that his conversations with Holmberg “were never supposed to be ‘on the record.’” Davis confirmed that he had investigated the Till case for his documentary and said that “I strive to protect my sources.” He maintained that he “never identified any individual when speaking to Holmberg, neither confirming nor denying his speculative assumptions. I certainly did not quote my source by name at any time.” Holmberg responded to Davis in a letter published in the same issue and maintained, “At no time did I tell Gode Davis that our conversations were off the record.” Holmberg showed Davis Jan Hillegas’s 1970 Southern Patriot article that spoke of Wilson and his alleged connection to the Till case, and “Davis confirmed to me that he’d been dealing with a person by that name.” See “‘American Lynching’ Betrayed,” and “Holmberg Replies,” both in Nation 276, no. 9 (March 10, 2003): 2, 26.
23. Killinger, author telephone interview.
24. “Senators Schumer & Talent & Representative Rangel Hold a News Conference on the Investigation into the Murder of Emmett Till,” Political Transcript Wire, November 19, 2004, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1p3-743021641.html; Ana Radelat, “Lawmaker Says He’ll Press AG Over Till Probe,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, November 20, 2004, 1B, 3B.
25. C. J. Janovy, “Justice at Last?,” Pitch (Kansas City), March 23, 2006, 15; “Senators Schumer & Talent & Representative Rangel”; 109 S. Cong. Res. 3, Introduced in the Senate, 109th Congress, January 24, 2005, www.opencongress.org/bill/sconres3-109/text; 109th H. Cong. Res. 77, Introduced in the House, February 17, 2005, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.CON.RES.77.IH:.
26. Dawn Turner Trice, “Rushed Action Could Jeopardize Till Case Justice,” Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2004, 2C; Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, August 17, 2013.
27. “Senators Schumer & Talent & Representative Rangel”; Mark Melady, “Filmmaker Says Indictments Expected; Story Told of 1955 Lynching of Black Teen,” Worchester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette, February 24, 1955, B1.
28. Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014; Hailman, author telephone interview.
29. Killinger, author telephone interview.
30. Page, “Full Probe Needed,” A40.
31. Prosecutive Report, 97–99; Willie Reed, author interview, February 6, 2007, Chicago; Jeffrey Andrews, author telephone interview, July 13, 2014.
32. Gretchen Ruethling, “Kin Disagree on Exhumation of Emmett Till,” New York Times, May 6, 2005, A23; Simeon Wright, with Herb Boyd, Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), 108–9; Jerry Mitchell, “Group Seeks to Exhume Till Body,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, October 31, 2004, 1A.
33. P. J. Huffstutter, “FBI Begins Unearthing Mystery; Officials Exhume Casket of Victim in ’55 Murder,” Ft. Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette, June 2, 2005, 4A; Dawn Turner Trice, “The First and Last Chance for Emmett Till to Speak for Himself,” Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2005, 1.
34. Roland S. Martin, “Rush Welcomes Justice Department Decision to Exhume Till,” Chicago Defender, May 5, 2005, 2.
35. Drew Jubera, “Autopsy Sought in 50-Year-Old Crime,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 5, 2005, A1. Myisha Priest erroneously states in a scholarly article that Emmett Till’s mother “objected to the exhumation,” apparently not realizing that Mamie Till-Mobley had died two years earlier. The author also suggests that this was a slap in the face to Till-Mobley, who “had repeatedly confirmed [the body’s] identity and did so under oath at the murder trial.” “The very facts that the FBI sought in the body . . . dispute and privilege knowledge in ways that preserve the utility of his body for the making of dominant power.” Priest did not discuss the fact that several family members saw the importance of the exhumation and autopsy. See Myisha Priest, “‘The Nightmare Is Not Cured’: Emmett Till and American Healing,” American Quarterly 62, no. 1 (March 2010): 2.
36. “Jesse Jackson Asks Mississippi, FBI to Apologize to Emmett Till Family,” New York Beacon, May 12–18, 2005, 3; Charles Sheehan, “Till Relatives Argue Over Exhuming Body,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 2005, 1.
37. “Some Till Relatives Oppose Exhumation,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 2005, 7; Sheehan, “Till Relatives Argue,” 1.
38. Dawn Turner Rice, “In Till Case, Leaders Don’t Need to Weigh In,” Chicago Tribune, May 9, 2005, 2C.
39. Garrity, author telephone interview; “Director Robert Mueller Announces Appointment of Deputy Chief Information Officer,” FBI National Press Release, April 21, 2005, www.fbi.gov; “State FBI Boss Moving to Washington,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 1, 2005, D8. Garrity’s new job as deputy chief information officer and business process reengineering executive placed him over the FBI’s technology efforts.
40. Robert J. Garrity Jr., “Exhumation of Till’s Remains Is Essential,” letter to the editor, Chicago Tribune, May 22, 2005, 10; Robert J. Garrity Jr., “Emmett Till Exhumation Is Crucial to a Just Resolution to This Case,” Tinley Park (Ill.) Daily Southtown, May 24, 2005, A8.
41. “Professor Seeks Transcript of Till Trial,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 21, 2005, B5; Davis Houck, author telephone interview, June 10, 2014. For Houck’s contributions on Emmett Till, see Davis W. Houck, “Killing Emmett,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 225–62; Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965 (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2006); Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008).
42. Houck, author telephone interview; Killinger remarks at Landmarks in American History and Culture; Killinger, email to author, July 22, 2014; Lee McGarrh, email to author, June 18, 2008; Prosecutive Report, 84. McGarrh’s name has been redacted from the FBI report for privacy purposes.
43. Killinger remarks at Landmarks in American History and Culture; Killinger to Anderson, July 22, 2014; Shaila Dewan and Ariel Hart, “FBI Discovers Trial Transcript in Emmett Till Case,” New York Times, May 18, 2005, A14; McGarrh, email to author, June 18, 2008; Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 228; Hailman, author telephone interview.
44. Monica Davey and Gretchen Ruethling, “After 50 Years, Emmett Till’s Body Is Exhumed,” New York Times, June 2, 2005, A12; Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 110; Karen E. Pride, “Federal Officials Lead Exhumation of Emmett Till,” Chicago Defender, June 2, 2005, 3.
45. Pride, “Federal Officials Lead,” 3; Anthony Rapp and Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory, “Declassified: The Real Story Behind Solving Crime,” Medill Reports, http://newsarchive.medill.north-western.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=210665&print=1.
46. “Autopsy Done, Emmett Till Is Reburied,” New York Times, June 5, 2005, 34; Natasha Korecki, “Possible Bullet Pieces Found in Till Autopsy,” Chicago Sun-Times, June 11, 2005, 6.
47. Prosecutive Report, 99.
48. Prosecutive Report, 99, 101, 111; Killinger, author telephone interview; Hailman, author telephone interview.
49. Prosecutive Report, 106; Simeon Wright’s name is redacted from the FBI report for privacy purposes. However, he explained that “they first focused on one of my sisters, but in the end the FBI selected me to be the donor. They came to my house and took blood samples, and after that, all I could do was to wait for the day of the exhumation” (Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 109).
50. Email to Keith Beauchamp, March 11, 2003, copy in author’s possession. The woman who wrote the email asked not to be identified “because it could cause me a lot of trouble.”
51. Beauchamp, author telephone interview, August 23, 2014; Prosecutive Report, 97, 108; Killinger to author, September 15, 2014.
52. Prosecutive Report, 110; “Autopsy Done,” 34; Korecki, “Possible Bullet Pieces Found,” 6; Laura Parker, “DNA Confirms Body Is Emmett Till’s,” USA Today, August 26, 2005, A2.
53. Hailman, author telephone interview; Confidential source C, author interview, December 3, 2014.
54. Hailman, author telephone interview. Killinger was not able to discuss his interactions with Carolyn Donham with me because of confidentiality issues, which still applied in her case because she was still living. Hailman, now retired, felt free to talk.
55. Prosecutive Report, 41–42, 46–49, 95.
56. Prosecutive Report, 57–58, 95–96. Carolyn Donham’s statement to Killinger is provided twice in the report. Inexplicably, Killinger redacted certain words in one of these statements but includes them in the other. What I include above is a synthesis of the two.
57. Although I did not hear this directly from Killinger, Hailman told me that Killinger “was absolutely sure that Carolyn was there,” meaning she was with Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam at Mose Wright’s home in the early morning hours of August 28, 1955 (Hailman, author telephone interview).
58. Prosecutive Report, 59, 80. Campbell’s wife, Mary Louise, told Killinger that she did not recall Carolyn Bryant placing a call to her husband that morning (Prosecutive Report, 59). Campbell’s name is redacted from the report because she was still living at the time. She died in 2009.
59. Prosecutive Report, 42; Defense notes from interview with Mrs. J. W. Milam, September 2, 1955, William Bradford Huie Papers, Cms 84, box 85, fd. 347, Ohio State University Library, Columbus (hereafter cited as Huie Papers).
60. Timothy B. Tyson, emails to author, March 31 and July 26, 2014. Tyson will discuss his interviews with Carolyn Donham in a forthcoming book on the Till case.
61. Defense notes from interview with Carolyn Bryant, September 2, 1955, Huie Papers, box 85, fd. 347.
62. Ray Brennan, “Till’s Uncle Sticks to Guns, Says He’ll Relate Kidnaping,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 19, 1955, 3.
63. For a sampling of the coverage of the Edgar Ray Killen case, see James Dao, “Indictment Makes Start at Lifting 40-Year-Old Cloud Over a Mississippi County,” New York Times, January 8, 2005, A11; Shaila Dewan, “Revisiting ’64 Civil Rights Deaths, This Time in a Murder Trial,” New York Times, June 12, 2005, 26; “Jury Selection Begins in ’64 Case of Civil Rights Workers’ Killings,” New York Times, June 14, 2005, A12; Shaila Dewan and Jerry Mitchell, “A Klan Confession, but Not to 1964 Civil Rights Murders,” New York Times, June 16, 2005, A18; Shaila Dewan, “Jury Hears Mother of Rights Worker Slain in 1964,” New York Times, June 18, 2005, A8; Sheila Dewan, “Prosecution Completes Case in 1964 Civil Rights Killings,” New York Times, June 19, 2005, 16; “Jury Is Split at Outset of Deliberation,” New York Times, June 21, 2005, A12; Ariel Hart, “41 Years Later, Ex-Klansman Gets 60 Years in Civil Rights Deaths,” New York Times, June 24, 2005, A14; Shaila Dewan, “Man Convicted in ’64 Case and Out on Bail Is Rejailed,” New York Times, September 10, 2005, A8.
64. Confidential source C, author interview, December 3, 2014.
65. This story once appeared on Barrett’s Nationalist website, but that link is no longer valid. However, on October 19, 2013, I found it at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/misc.legal/CdjqsQBAX6c. Jerry Mitchell, longtime reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, verified to me that Barrett did, in fact, consult with Frank Bryant, because Barrett discussed his conversation personally with Mitchell (Jerry Mitchell, email to author, October 19, 2013). WXVT TV, of Greenville, Mississippi, no longer has a copy of this story, unfortunately, as verified by Woodrow Wilkins, a reporter and web director at the station, in an email to the author on November 6, 2013.
66. Chris Joyner, “Black Man Suspected in Death of Mississippi White Supremacist,” USA Today, April 23, 2010, A2; Earnest McBride, “McGee Family Decries Downplay of Racist Provocation in Barrett Murder Case,” Jackson Advocate, August 4, 2011, 1A, 9A.
67. See Bonnie Blue, Emmett Till’s Secret Witness: FBI Confidential Source Speaks (Park Forest, Ill.: B. L. Richey Publishing, 2013). Blue told me she recorded the conversations but would not say whether she provided Killinger with those recordings, gave him a transcript, or only gave him an oral summary of what Milam told her. Blue, who lectured on Emmett Till under the name of B. L. Richey prior to the release of her book, was once very dissatisfied with the FBI’s investigation and accused Killinger of sloppiness and even dishonesty. After passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Act in 2008 (discussed later), Blue wrote of her dissatisfaction with the FBI agent on a blog for the Chicago Sun-Times: “Now all that I wait for, is that an actual investigation to be conducted by the FBI. The 2004/2007 report was so flawed that the FBI themselves [sic] had to conduct their own investigation into the actions of the FBI Agent conducting the investigation.” She went on to assert that the US attorney general was then looking into Killinger’s alleged missteps, something Blue said she had been urging since the report came out in March 2007. “I know that it is flawed because the agent deleted important information and twisted the facts that were relayed to him by Confidential Source, ‘b2,’” whom Blue claimed to be. I have found no evidence that Killinger’s probe has at any time been under investigation.
In June 2014, I contacted Blue about her online criticisms of Killinger. In response to my email she wrote: “I have never posted anything of that nature. . . . As for the FBI, I am satisfied with the work that was done in this case.” When I sent her the link showing her critical comments, she responded later that same day. “Wow! Very good! I had completely forgotten about that.” She provided nothing to explain the discrepancy between her 2008 and 2014 assessments of Killinger’s probe. For her online criticisms, see comments under http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/09/emmett_till_civil_rights_bill.html; author, email to Bonnie Blue, June 28, 2014; Bonnie Blue, email to author, June 29, 2014 (first under that date); author, email to Bonnie Blue, June 29, 2014; Bonnie Blue, email to author, June 29, 2014 (second under that date).
Blue became uneasy over my continued questions about the information she provided Killinger during the investigation and promptly sent me an email threatening legal action. “Should I find that any of my information (that is not in the official FBI report) is used in any of your work concerning Emmett Till, without my permission, I will have my attorney contact you” (Bonnie Blue, email to author, July 27, 2014). I am proceeding under the assumption that Killinger accurately summarized Blue’s material and will reference corresponding sections of Secret Witness and, where necessary, point out discrepancies between the book and the report.
68. Prosecutive Report, 90. In her novel based on her interviews with Milam, Blue writes that Milam rode out to Minter City and met up with Campbell, and the two arranged to meet later for their weekly round of drinking. Milam told Campbell to meet them at a place called Hillards. Blue, Emmett Till’s Secret Witness, 121–22.
69. Prosecutive Report, 90. In her book, Blue says that Milam rode to Loggins’s home in Milam’s truck and picked up both Loggins and Collins. From there they drove to Bryant’s store and picked up Roy and Carolyn. They then drove out to an old barn that had been converted into a whiskey still and met up with Hubert Clark, who had arrived at the barn just a few minutes earlier. Melvin Campbell then showed up. Milam demanded that Clark let him borrow his car because he did not want anyone noticing his new green and white pickup. J. W. Milam, Roy and Carolyn Bryant, Melvin Campbell, and Levi “Too Tight” Collins then got into Clark’s car, leaving Clark and Loggins behind. The group drove to Money, and headed out to Mose Wright’s house, where they kidnapped Emmett Till. Melvin Campbell and Carolyn Bryant remained in the car; when J. W. and Roy took Till outside, Carolyn identified him as the right person. Blue, Emmett Till’s Secret Witness, 123–41, 148.
70. Prosecutive Report, 90; Blue, Emmett Till’s Secret Witness, 148–54.
71. Prosecutive Report, 90; Blue, Emmett Till’s Secret Witness, 155–59.
72. Prosecutive Report, 91; Blue, Emmett Till’s Secret Witness, 160–61, 252–56, 290–94.
73. Prosecutive Report, 91; Killinger remarks at Landmarks in American History and Culture.
74. Prosecutive Report, 91–92, 98.
75. Louis E. Lomax, “Leslie Milam Quits Farm Home,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 5, 1956, 5.
76. “Cleveland Man Charged with Possession of Drugs,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), February 16, 1971, 1; Leslie Milam’s conviction is mentioned as one of several news items under the headline “Woman Wins Damage Suit,” Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), June 11, 1971, 14. Both articles mention that Milam was free on $2,500 bail.
77. Macklyn Hubbell, author telephone interview, March 1, 2014; Prosecutive Report, 92–93; Leslie Milam obituary, Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Miss.), September 1, 1974, 3; Frances Bryant obituary, http://rayfuneralhome.net/tribute/details/443/Frances_Bryant/obituary.html.
78. Prosecutive Report, 27, 29, 31, 49, 133; Killinger, author telephone interview.
79. Prosecutive Report, 28–29; Ellen Barry, “Son Hopes Aging Father Talks About Till Murder,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2005, 7A.
80. Prosecutive Report, 64–67.
81. Prosecutive Report, 112–13; Jerry Tallmer, “Documentary on the Grisly Lynching of Emmett Till,” Villager, August 3–9, 1955, http://thevillager.com/villager_118/documentaryonthegrisly.html. For more on Peggy Morgan’s life, see Carolyn Haines, My Mother’s Keeper: The Peggy Morgan Story (Montgomery, Ala.: River City Publishing, 2003).
82. Prosecutive Report, 49–50, 114.
83. Jimmie Briggs, “Emmett Till Story at Film Forum,” New York Amsterdam News, August 18, 2005, 20; Dwight Brown, “Film: The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” New York Beacon, August 11, 2005, 25; Beauchamp, author telephone interview, November 10, 2013. I attended the August 28, 2005, event at the Film Forum and taped the discussion featuring Simeon Wright, Roosevelt Crawford, and other guests.
84. Joyce Shelby, “More Tied to Till Death—Filmmaker,” New York Daily News, August 30, 2005, 2.
85. Charles Sheehan, “FBI Closes Probe into Till’s Death,” Chicago Tribune, November 24, 2005, 31.
86. Killinger, author telephone interview; Dale Killinger remarks at Landmarks in American History and Culture.
87. Charles Sheehan, “Federal Report on 1955 Murder Going to D.A.,” Los Angeles Times, November 24, 2005, A35.
88. Killinger, author telephone interview; “Mississippi Must Make Every Effort to Prosecute Till Murder,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 20, 2006, 39; Laura Parker, “DA Has Tough, Final Call in Till Case,” USA Today, March 22, 2006, A3; Holbrook Mohr, “No Federal Charges in Till Case, FBI Says,” Chicago Tribune, March 17, 2006, 8.
89. “Till Report Completed,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, November 24, 2005, B6; “Prosecutor Studying FBI’s Investigative File into Till Murder,” Bay State Banner (Boston), July 6, 2006, 2; Laura Parker, “FBI Report on Emmett Till Filed in Mississippi,” Miami Times, March 22–28, 2006, 7A.
90. Herb Boyd, “The Untold Story of Emmett Till on Court TV,” New York Amsterdam News, September 28, 2006, 22.
91. See http://emmyonline.com/news_28th_nominations; www.imdb.com/title/tt0475420/awards?ref_=tt_awd.
92. Drew Jubera, “Duty Outweighs Emotion for DA in Till Case,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 5, 2006, A1.
93. Jubera, “Duty Outweighs Emotion,” A1.
94. Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 231.
95. These cases are summarized in Keith Beauchamp, email to author, August 23, 2014. For Gibbs v. State, see http://law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1955/39247-0.html.
96. “Grand Jury to Look at New Till Angle,” Chicago Tribune, February 22, 2007, 8.
97. Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 231–32; Killinger, email to author, September 15, 2014; William Browning, “Till Jury Talks: Grand Jury Says Evidence Wasn’t There to Indict,” Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth, September 30, 2007, 1A, 10A.
98. Browning, “Till Jury Talks,” 10A.
99. Jerry Mitchell, “Grand Jury Issues No Indictment in Till Killing,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, February 27, 2007, 3A; Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014.
100. Sykes, author telephone interview, June 12, 2014; Allen G. Breed, “End of Till Case Draws Mixed Response,” USA Today, March 4, 2007, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-04-till-case_N.htm.; Herb Boyd, “No Indictments in Till Case,” New York Amsterdam News, March 8, 2007, 4.
101. Breed, “End of Till Case”; Boyd, “No Indictments,” 4.
102. Hailman, From Midnight to Guntown, 231; Hailman, author telephone interview. In his book, Hailman said that Wright was familiar with Carolyn Bryant’s voice “from weekly visits to her store.” However, Hailman is mistaken in this. Wright testified at the trial that he did not trade at the Bryant store. See Trial Transcript, 12. He told defense attorneys the same thing (“Resume of Interview with Mose Wright,” Huie Papers, box 85, fd. 347). The Bryants had only taken over the store within the past eighteen months.
103. Browning, “Till Jury Talks,” 10A.
104. Jeff Coen, “Relatives of Emmett Till Meet with FBI,” Chicago Tribune, March 30, 2007, 3. For the FBI documents, see http://vault.fbi.gov/Emmett%20Till%20.
1. Mississippi Code 1972, Vol. 14, Highways, Bridges, and Ferries (State of Mississippi, 1972–2012), 190–91; “Renamed Roads Honor Rights Victims,” Chicago Tribune, March 22, 2005, 12; “Emmett Till’s Legacy 50 Years Later,” Jet 108, no. 12 (September 19, 2005): 23. On this same occasion, Barbour also signed into law the renaming of a portion of Mississippi 19 as the Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Memorial Highway.
2. Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 187n6.
3. Robert Fredrick Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 1953–1961 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 205–14; David A. Nichols, A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 143–44. For the State of the Union speech, see “Text of President Eisenhower’s Annual Message to Congress on State of the Union,” New York Times, January 11, 1957, 10, also online at pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/eisenhower-state57.
4. Congressional Record—Appendix, January 10, 1957, A124, www.heinonline.org.
5. Burk, Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 220–21; “Rights Hearings Will Open Today,” New York Times, February 4, 1957, 8; “States Assured on Rights Issue,” New York Times, February 5, 1957, 15; “Need to Protect Negro Vote Cited,” New York Times, February 15, 1957, 15.
6. As quoted in Burk, Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 225.
7. For Johnson’s role in the Civil Rights Act of 1957, see Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Knopf, 2002), 831–1012.
8. Congressional Record—House, June 14, 1957, 9189, www.heinonline.org.
9. Congressional Record—House, June 14, 1957, 9194, www.heinonline.org; Burk, Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 221; Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study of Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case” (Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 1963), 183–85, reprinted as Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Murder and Trial of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 219–20; Stephen J. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (New York: Free Press, 1988), 82–83.
10. C. P. Trussell, “Civil Rights Plan Passed by House,” New York Times, June 19, 1957, 1.
11. William S. White, “Senate, 45 to 39, Sends Rights Bill Straight to Floor,” New York Times, June 21, 1957, 1, 16; William S. White, “Rights Struggle Opens in Senate,” New York Times, July 9, 1957, 1, 19; William S. White, “Senate Leaning to a Compromise Over Rights Bill,” New York Times, July 10, 1957, 1, 14; William S. White, “Senate, 51-42, Attaches Jury Trials to Rights Bill in Defeat for President,” New York Times, August 2, 1957, 1, 8; W. H. Lawrence, “Eisenhower Irate,” New York Times, August 3, 1957, 1; William S. White, “Senate Approves Rights Bill, 72–18, with Jury Clause,” New York Times, August 8, 1957, 1, 12; William S. White, “Martin Rejects Civil Rights Bill Voted by Senate,” New York Times, August 13, 1957, 1, 25; William S. White, “President Backs Jury Compromise in the Rights Bill,” New York Times, August 22, 1957, 1, 17; William S. White, “Congress Chiefs Reach an Accord on Civil Rights,” New York Times, August 24, 1957, 1, 34.
12. William S. White, “House Passes Rights Bill; Senators Rule Out a Delay,” New York Times, August 28, 1957, 1, 55; “Thurmond Talks Hours on Rights,” New York Times, August 29, 1957, 1; Jay Walz, “Carolinian Sets Talking Record,” New York Times, August 30, 1957, 1; William S. White, “Senate Votes Rights Bill and Sends It to President,” New York Times, August 30, 1957, 1, 20; W. H. Lawrence, “President Backs U.S. Court Order,” New York Times, September 10, 1957, 29.
13. For a look at the final version of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, see “Text of Civil Rights Bill as Passed by Congress,” New York Times, August 31, 1957, 6.
14. Alvin Sykes, author telephone interview, July 12, 2014; Monroe Dodd, Pursuit of Truth (Kansas City, Mo.: Kansas City Public Library, 2014), 17.
15. “Text of the Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act,” introduced in the US Senate on July 1, 2005, www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s1369/text; H.R. 3506 (109th); “Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, H.R. 3506,” introduced in the US House of Representatives, www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr3506/text.
16. Jubera, “Civil Rights-Era Cases,” A1; Trice, “Setback on Till,” 2C1; “Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act,” Senate, Calendar No. 211, June 22, 2007, 12; 109th Congress, 2nd Session, S.2679, in the Senate of the United States, April 27, 2006, and S.2679, Calendar No. 579, August 3, 2006; http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-109s2679rs/pdf/BILLS-109s2679rs.pdf.
17. Tommy Stevenson, “House Passes ‘Emmett Till Bill,’” Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News, June 21, 2007, 1A, 2A; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 18.
18. Sykes, author telephone interview, July 12, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 18.
19. Herb Boyd, “Emmett Till Bill Stalled in Senate,” New York Amsterdam News, July 31, 2008, 4; “Senate Kills Bill for $10B in New Spending,” USA Today, July 26, 2008, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-07-28-senatebill_N.htm.
20. Sykes, author telephone interview, July 12, 2014; Dodd, Pursuit of Truth, 18–19.
21. “Reid Statement on Passage of Emmett Till Bill,” http://democrats.senate.gov/2008/09/24/reid-statement-on-passage-of-emmett-till-bill/#.VLw2AEfF-J0; Julia Malone, “Emmett Till Act Fulfills Promise: Pledge Kept to Slain Teenager’s Late Mother,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 10, 2008, A7.
22. Congressional Record—Senate, September 24, 2008, S9352, www.heinonline.org.
23. Malone, “Emmett Till Act Fulfills Promise,” A7.
24. Harry N. MacLean, The Past Is Never Dead: The Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi’s Struggle for Redemption (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2009), 88; Susan Glisson, author telephone interview, July 29, 2014; Susan Glisson, email to author, July 30, 2014.
25. MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 143, 146; Glisson, author telephone interview.
26. MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 146; Glisson, author telephone interview; Glisson, email to author, July 30, 2014; Jerry Mitchell, “Tallahatchie County to Formally Apologize to Till’s Family,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, October 2, 2007, 3A.
27. MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 88–91, 143–46; Glisson, author telephone interview; Drew Jubera, “Decades Later, an Apology,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 2, 2007, A4.
28. Senate Bill 2689, to Judiciary, Division A, Mississippi Legislature, Regular Session 2007, http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2007/pdf/SB/2600-2699/SB2689IN.pdf; Mitchell, “Tallahatchie County to Formally Apologize,” 3A; Glisson, author telephone interview; MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 223.
29. MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 223–24; Glisson, author telephone interview.
30. MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 225; Glisson, author telephone interview.
31. Annette Hollowell, “Tallahatchie County Group Commemorates Emmett Till,” Wellspring, March 2008, 2.
32. To read the resolution in full, go to etmctallahatchie.com/pages/resolution.htm.
33. Audie Cornish, “County Apologizes to Emmett Till Family,” October 2, 2007, npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14904083; MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 231–32.
34. Hollowell, “Tallahatchie Group Commemorates,” 2–3; photo of marker taken by author on October 2, 2007, Sumner, Miss.
35. MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 238.
36. The brochure may be downloaded at www.etmctallahatchie.com/documents/drivingtour.pdf.
37. “Memorial to Emmett Till to Be Placed in Leflore County,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, December 31, 2005, D1.
38. Karen E. Pride, “Commemoration of Emmett Till Lynching Anniversary Includes Renaming Expressway Bridge,” Chicago Defender, August 29–30 2005, 3; “Chicago School Renamed in Honor of Emmett Till,” Jet 109, no. 11 (March 20, 2006): 20, 22, 46; http://www.preservationchicago.org/success-story/11.
39. Jubera, “Decades Later,” A4; MacLean, Past Is Never Dead, 238.
40. Yolanda Jones, “Sign Honoring Emmett Till Is Marred by Vandalism,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 26, 2006, B2; “Vandals Destroy Sign Marking Emmett Till Murder Site,” USA Today, October 27, 2007, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-27-emmett-till_N.htm.
41. These were personal observations I made during trips to the Mississippi Delta on March 15, 2013, and August 14, 2014.
42. See John Ditmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Glen Feldman, ed., Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004).
1. Emmett Till Historical Museum flyer, copy sent to author by Carolyn Towns, manager of Burr Oak Cemetery.
2. Dennis Lythgoe, “The Death of Emmett Till,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), February 26, 1997, C1–C2.
3. Mamie Till-Mobley, letter to author and the students at Olympus Jr. High School, February 14, 2000.
4. Online at http://theburroakcemetery.com/burr-oak-history; Emmett Till Historical Museum flyer.
5. Emmett Till Historical Museum flyer.
6. Emmett Till Historical Museum flyer.
7. “Breach of Trust,” Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2009, 7; “200–300 Bodies Disinterred in Grave-Reselling Scheme,” Seattle Times, July 10, 2009, A2.
8. Dan Blake, “Cook County Board to Sue Cemetery Owners,” Chicago Tribune, July 22, 2009, 8; “Here’s the Cemetery Worker Who Blew the Whistle,” Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald, July 22, 2009, 15.
9. Don Babwin, “Till Casket Found in Rusty Shed,” Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, July 14, 2009, B10; Lauren Fitzpatrick, “Proposed Till Museum Lost in Burr Oak Scandal,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 11, 2011, 22.
10. Jacqueline Trescott, “National African American Museum Acquires Emmett Till’s Casket,” Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2009, A14; Wendell Hutson, “Remembering Emmett Till,” Chicago Defender, September 2, 2009, 7.
11. Lauren Fitzpatrick, “‘I Am Very Sorry’: Burr Oak Manager Gets 12 Years,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 9, 2011, 2; Lolly Bowean, “Burr Oak Director Gets 12 Years,” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 2011, 4.
12. Dorothy Rowley, “African American Museum Groundbreaking Held on the National Mall,” Washington Informer, February 23, 2012, 32–33; Ian Duncan, “African American History Museum Is Underway in D.C.,” Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2012, A12.
13. Francine Knowles, “Monument Dedicated to Burr Oak Healing,” Chicago Sun-Times, August 30, 2014, 5.
1. William Bradford Huie, “The Shocking Story of an Approved Killing in Mississippi,” Look, January 24, 1956, 46; “Bonnie Blue, Researcher, Author, Lecturer,” http://emmetttills-secretwitness.com/index.html.
2. George Murray, “‘Wolf Call’ Blamed by Argo Teen,” Chicago American, September 1, 1955, 4; William Bradford Huie, Wolf Whistle, and Other Stories (New York: Signet Books, 1959), 40; Devery S. Anderson, “A Wallet, a White Woman, and a Whistle: Fact and Fiction in Emmett Till’s Encounter in Money, Mississippi,” Southern Quarterly: A Journal of Arts & Letters in the South 45, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 11–12; Defense notes from interview with Carolyn Bryant, September 2, 1955, William Bradford Huie Papers, Cms 84, box 85, fd. 356, Ohio State University Library, Columbus (hereafter cited as Huie Papers).
3. “Kidnapped Boy Whistled at Woman,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 1955, 2; Murray, “‘Wolf Call’ Blamed by Argo Teen,” 4; Mattie Smith Colin and Robert Elliott, “Mother Waits in Vain for Her ‘Bo,’” Chicago Defender, September 10, 1955, 2; “Nation Horrified by Murder of Kidnapped Chicago Youth,” Jet 8, no. 19 (September 1955): 8.
4. Huie, “Shocking Story,” 46; Prosecutive Report of Investigation Concerning . . . Emmett Till, Deceased, Victim, February 9, 2009, 44 (hereafter cited as Prosecutive Report); Amos Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear Emmett Till Whistle,” California Eagle, January 26, 1956, 2.
5. This description of the location of the candy counter is given in defense notes of interview with Carolyn Bryant, September 2, 1955.
6. Defense notes of interview with Carolyn Bryant, September 2, 1955.
7. Prosecutive Report of Investigation Concerning . . . Emmett Till, Deceased, Appendix A—Trial Transcript, February 9, 2006, 269–75 (hereafter cited as Trial Transcript).
8. Timothy B. Tyson, emails to author, March 31 and July 26, 2014.
9. “Two Armed White Men Break into Negro Worker’s Home,” Greenwood (Miss.) Morning Star, September 1, 1955, 1; “Nation Horrified,” 8; Murray, “‘Wolf Call’ Blamed by Argo Teen,” 1; Clark Porteous, “Grand Jury to Get Case of Slain Negro Boy Monday,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 1, 1955, 5.
10. Defense notes of interview with Carolyn Bryant, September 2, 1955; Huie, “Shocking Story,” 47.
11. Huie, “Shocking Story,” 47; Prosecutive Report, 46.
12. T. R. M. Howard, “Terror Reigns in Mississippi,” speech delivered October 2, 1955, Baltimore, Washington Afro-American, October 1, 1955, 19, and Baltimore Afro-American, October 8, 1955, 6, reprinted in Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, eds., Religion, Rhetoric, and the Civil Rights Movement (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2008), 126 (hereafter, references to this speech will cite Houck and Dixon only); Huie, “Shocking Story,” 47.
13. Olive Arnold Adams, Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till (Mound Bayou, Miss.: Regional Councils of Negro Leadership, 1956), 18; Howard, “Terror Reigns,” 126.
14. Dixon, “Mrs. Bryant Didn’t Even Hear,” 2.
15. Wheeler Parker Jr., Crosby Smith Jr., and Simeon Wright, author interview, February 7, 2007, Argo, Ill., comments by Wright; Trial Transcript, 277.
16. Prosecutive Report, 41–42.
17. David A. Shostak, “Crosby Smith: Forgotten Witness to a Mississippi Nightmare,” Negro History Bulletin 38, no. 1 (December 1974–January 1975): 321; George F. Curry, “Killed for Whistling at a White Woman,” Emerge, August 1995, 27; Simeon Wright, with Herb Boyd, Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), 137. Wright says nothing in his book about the accusations that Maurice told Roy Bryant about the store incident, but defends his brother against a rumor that “Maurice had told Roy Bryant how to get to our house in exchange for a fifty-cent store credit.”
18. “Look Magazine Names Milam, Bryant in Confession Story,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), January 14, 1956, 1, 2.
19. Keith A. Beauchamp, “What Really Happened to Emmett Till: A Corrective to the 1956 Look Confession,” unpublished paper, n.d., copy in author’s possession.
20. Prosecutive Report, 55–56. Robert Wright’s name is redacted from the report for privacy purposes, but it was confirmed to me by Simeon Wright that Robert was the one in question (Simeon Wright, author interview, October 2, 2007, Money, Miss.).
21. Wright and Boyd, Simeon’s Story, 52, 137.
22. “Nation Horrified,” 8; “Details Told of Lynching of Emmett,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 17, 1955, 14.
23. Trial Transcript, 39; Huie, Wolf Whistle, 41.
24. “Resume of Interview with Mose Wright,” Huie Papers, box 85, fd. 346.
25. Statements of both Ruth Crawford Jackson and Roosevelt Crawford are in Keith A. Beauchamp, prod., The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (Till Freedom Come Productions, 2005).
26. Prosecutive Report, 46.
27. Prosecutive Report, 46–47.
28. Mary Strafford, “‘When I Find Time I’ll Cry,’ Till’s Mother Tells Afro,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 29, 1955, 2.
29. Steve Ritea, “Opening Old Wounds,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 15, 2004, 1; Prosecutive Report, 48.
30. Michael Weissenstein, “Film Recounts Till’s Untold Story; Director’s First Work Helped Reopen Case,” Chicago Tribune, August 28, 2005, 14.
31. Ruth Crawford Jackson, interview, in Beauchamp, Untold Story.
32. Trial Transcript, 22–23, 45–48; “Resume of Interview with Mose Wright.”
33. Trial Transcript, 20, 33–38, 64–65; “Resume of Interview with Mose Wright.”
34. Prosecutive Report, 90.
35. “What the Public Didn’t Know About the Till Trial,” Jet 8, no. 23 (October 13, 1955): 14.
36. Defense notes of interview with Roy Bryant, September 6, 1955, Huie Papers, box 85, fd. 346.
37. Rita Dailey, email to author, May 14, 2012. Rita Dailey wrote me after finding my website, emmetttillmurder.com. Steve Whitaker, a Charleston native who wrote his 1963 master’s thesis on the Till case, vouched for Bobby Dailey’s honesty (Steve Whitaker, email to author, May 14, 2012).
38. James L. Hicks, open letter to U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, in “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” Washington Afro-American, November 19, 1955, 4, reprinted in Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 195–96.
39. Prosecutive Report, 58, 95–96.
40. Prosecutive Report, 58.
41. M. Susan Orr-Klopher, The Emmett Till Book (Parchman, Miss.: M. Susan Orr-Klopher, 2005), 7–8.
42. Prosecutive Report, 90.
43. Huie, “Shocking Story,” 49–50.
44. Prosecutive Report, 92.
45. William Bradford Huie to Roy Wilkins, October 12, 1955, Huie Papers, box 38, fd. 353a.
46. Hicks, “Hicks Digs into Till Case,” 4; Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 196; Prosecutive Report, 58, 90–91.
47. Adams, Time Bomb, 19; Amos Dixon, “Milam Master-Minded Emmett Till Killing,” California Eagle, February 2, 1956, 2.
48. See, for example, David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 152; Beauchamp, Untold Story; Willie Reed, author interview, February 6, 2007, Chicago.
49. Trial Transcript, 231.
50. T. R. M. Howard, interview, Pittsburgh Courier, October 8, 1955, 4; Amos Dixon, “Till Case: Torture and Murder,” California Eagle, February 16, 1956, 2.
51. Henry Lee Loggins, telephone interview with Linda Beito, July 21, 2001, transcript in author’s possession.
52. See Willie Reed interviews in Stanley Nelson, Murder of Emmett Till (Firelight Media, 2002), and Beauchamp, Untold Story.
53. Roosevelt Ward, “Negro Youth Ready to Testify Again at Trial of Emmett Till’s Kidnapers,” Daily Worker (New York), October 25, 1955, 3. See also Nelson, Murder of Emmett Till; Beauchamp, Untold Story; Michael Radutzky, “The Murder of Emmett Till,” 60 Minutes (CBS, October 24, 2004).
54. Trial Transcript, 247, 253.
55. Prosecutive Report, 112.
56. Clark Porteous, “Officers Work All Night on Searches,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, September 21, 1955, 1, 7; Prosecutive Report, 91–92.
57. Dixon, “Emmett Till: Torture and Murder,” February 16, 1956, 1.
58. Huie, “Shocking Story,” 50; Prosecutive Report, 80.
59. Prosecutive Report, 91; Porteous, “Officers Work All Night,” 7; Ralph Hutto, “NAACP Leader Says Two Witnesses Disappeared,” Jackson State Times, September 23, 1955, 6A.
60. Dixon, “Torture and Murder,” 2.
61. Huie, “Shocking Story,” 50.
62. Prosecutive Report, 64–67.
63. Huie, “Shocking Story,” 50; Prosecutive Report, 92; Porteous, “Officers Work All Night,” 7; Robert Walker statement in introductory film shown at the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, Glendora, Miss. Although his name is redacted from Dale Killinger’s report, Walker did supply Killinger with other information, but none of his statements in the Prosecutive Report mention seeing the fan. He told Killinger that he saw the truck go in the direction of the gin (Prosecutive Report, 64–65).
64. Resume of interview with George Smith, Sheriff of Leflore County, Mississippi, Huie Papers, box 85, fd. 346; Prosecutive Report, 131.
65. Nelson, Murder of Emmett Till.
66. Prosecutive Report, 68, 91.
67. Dailey, emails to author, May 14, 2012, and September 7, 2013.
68. Metress, Lynching of Emmett Till, 159–61.
69. L. Alex Wilson, “Reveals Two Key Witnesses Jailed,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis, Tenn.), October 1, 1955, 2.
70. Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case” (Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 1963), 32, reprinted as Hugh Stephen Whitaker, “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Murder and Trial of Emmett Till,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 208–9.
71. Henry Lee Loggins, interview, in Beauchamp, Untold Story.
72. Louis E. Lomax, “Henry Loggins Found, but Refuses to Leave Jail Cell,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 12, 1955, 8; Lomax, “Milam Jails His Handyman,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 20, 1956, 5.