Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) (36 page)

 T
he story broke around the middle of October. We were in Washington. And that kind of made sense, the timing and all. This was all about politics, every last part of it: the trial, the intimidation, and now the revelation.

The Washington trip had been arranged as part of a national drive to push for an end to racial intolerance. It was called the “Spiritual Mobilization,” and we would travel to a number of cities to appeal to people to get involved and, of course, to contribute to the cause. It was a very busy and stressful time. I was making two or even three speeches in a single day. Rayfield, Aunt Lizzy, and Bishop Isaiah Roberts traveled with me to Washington, so that helped me a lot. Now, everyone had always known that getting the federal government involved would be a very important part of the drive. We had asked for a meeting with Maxwell Raab. He was the secretary to President Eisenhower’s cabinet and the White House aide on minority affairs. We were told that Raab had a very heavy schedule and that he would not be able to meet with us. But, at least there had been a response. President Eisenhower never even answered the telegram I had sent asking for his help with a federal investigation of Emmett’s murder.

We also had wanted to schedule a hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Civil Rights while we were in Washington. But we were sent regrets by Senator Thomas Hennings, the chairman of that subcommittee. Unfortunately, we were told, there would be no session during our visit. There was no word on any future hearings. That really shouldn’t have surprised us. The chairman of the full committee, the one that basically controlled Senator Hennings’s subcommittee, was Mississippi’s own Senator James O. Eastland, who had fought tooth and nail to resist any desegregation
in his state. I would find out that Senator Eastland had another card up his sleeve in this dirty little political game, and he would use his government connections to play it.

Despite the fact that the federal government was leaving us out in the cold, the main event of our trip would go very well. About six thousand people would attend the mass meeting that had been scheduled. A second meeting would be arranged for the overflow crowd of more than four thousand.

The headline for the day, though, would not be the story about mass meetings or racial intolerance or calls for government action. The headline would be a story that was leaked to the Southern press. It was the story of Louis Till. It finally would clear up for me what the army had meant when it had classified his cause of death as “willful misconduct.” But it would do a whole lot more than that. Private Louis Till was court-martialed and, on February 17, 1944, he was found guilty of murdering an Italian woman and raping two others. He was hanged on July 2, 1945, and buried in a military cemetery in Naples. The execution order was signed by General Dwight David Eisenhower.

The uproar was deafening. That story was used in Mississippi just the way it was intended by the people who leaked it. For people who didn’t know any better, it would provide the justification for everything that happened to Emmett. The suggestion was clear: “Like father, like son.” That story fed the most horrible stereotypes and played on the greatest fear white Southerners had about desegregation. It was an irrational notion that more contact between blacks and whites would mean greater risk for white women. Oh, it was terrible.

It was so unfair, too. Especially since these same records that had been given so easily to reporters were never released to me. I had tried. And that was on the record. Among the other documents that were released with this revelation was a 1948 letter. It had been written by the lawyer Joseph Tobias on my behalf and it sought an explanation of why benefits were cut off. The records that were coming out now showed why I could never get an explanation from the army, from Louis Till’s commanding officer, or from the chaplain. Even many years later, when I filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the documents I received were so censored that it wound up being a waste of my money. The army, it seems, only released this kind of information to the next of kin. Louis and I had been separated, so he had listed an uncle as his next of kin. The only reason I ever got any information at all was that I was listed on the allotment Louis had worked out. But that was it. After our efforts failed in 1948, I had settled into the
uncertainty of it all, feeling that I would never find out what had happened. I never imagined I would find out like this.

Ethel Payne, a writer at the
Chicago Defender
, dug into the matter. She reported that the judge advocate general would never release such information to the press, and hadn’t done it in this case. The army had rigid rules about the release of records like those. The reporters who broke the story wound up giving credit where it was due: Senator Eastland had helped.

This was an outrage and, while I was caught off guard in Washington trying to answer reporters’ questions while preparing for the speech later that day, Attorney William Henry Huff was in Chicago blaming Mississippi’s two senators, Eastland and John Stennis, for the controversy. The whole business was insulting, unfair, and misleading. And, it seems, it was starting to cause a breach in my relationship with the NAACP. Roy Wilkins reportedly told someone he was glad he hadn’t gotten caught in that “Louis Till trap.” Apparently, he had intended to include a reference to Louis and his service to the country in some remarks he had been planning to make. I was demoralized by something that was not even my fault, and certainly wasn’t Emmett’s. In a strange way, he was being held to account for a father he never knew. Even worse, there was some talk that Louis himself could have been misjudged.

The most terrible stories were told to me. Nightmare stories about how a number of black soldiers were treated during World War II. With the revelation about Louis, I began to hear from his army friends. The unit he served in was an all-black unit made up mostly of fellows from the Chicago area, so it was not hard for them to locate me. Louis’s friends told me they thought he had gotten set up. First, they didn’t believe Louis was capable of doing what he was accused of doing. Second, there was a larger problem the black soldiers were dealing with. It was a problem that had followed them overseas from the United States. Gene’s brother, Wealthy, talked about it, too. He had served in Europe and recalled how black soldiers would get roused at three in the morning. Military police would look over the black soldiers in formation. The MPs would bring in local women who would point out someone in the line. One night, Wealthy recalled, a woman was walking the line and stopped when she got to his section of the formation. He knew what that meant and he was terrified. He began to sweat, knowing that black soldiers who got pointed out at three in the morning were always taken away. They were not brought back. He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, but that didn’t seem to matter. As it turned out, the woman pointed to the man standing next to Wealthy, not
that he found a whole lot of relief in that. That man was taken away and he was never seen again. Wealthy was distressed about it. The man slept in the bunk next to his, and Wealthy knew the man had been in his bunk every night.

It seemed that the army really didn’t need much more proof than a late-night identification to take black soldiers out. But based on what Louis’s friends told me, it seemed the real offense wasn’t always against white women. Often, it really was against white men. A number of women in those late-night lineups, it seems, were only identifying the men who slept with them, not men they were accusing of rape. There were rules about soldiers fraternizing with local women—white women. But for many of the white officers and soldiers from the South, there also was a custom about that sort of thing. They wouldn’t tolerate seeing a black soldier with even a
picture
of a white woman, let alone a relationship. There were friends of Louis’s in the service who wondered whether he really was guilty. Like Wealthy had wondered about that fellow in the bunk next to his. But they could only wonder.

Louis died before he could see what would happen to his son. Bo died before he could learn about what had happened to his father. Yet they were connected in ways that ran as deep as their heritage, as long as their bloodline. I was left behind to think about all the ways they were connected. J. W. Milam had served in World War II. He had become a lieutenant. He was just the kind of tough guy the army would honor, reward with a field commission. I couldn’t help thinking about so many Milams and Bryants in the armed services, good ole boys. I couldn’t help thinking about how much power these men would have had over the lives of black soldiers, just as they would one day have again back home on their farms and their plantations. I couldn’t help thinking about all of that, and how maybe, just maybe, Louis Till had been set up, as his friends believed. So, in the end, Eastland and his supporters just might have been right after all. Maybe Emmett did wind up like his father, an echo of what had happened ten years earlier. Maybe they both were lynched.

The timing of the revelation could not have been better for people with the worst of intentions. On November 8, 1955, the grand jury of Leflore County, Mississippi, sat to consider whether to indict Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam in Emmett’s kidnapping. Under Mississippi law at the time, Bryant and Milam could have faced ten years in prison, or even death, if convicted. Bryant had admitted to the kidnapping when he was questioned by Leflore County Sheriff George Smith. Milam admitted to it when he was questioned by Smith’s deputy, John Ed Cothran. The sheriff
and the deputy were both called to testify at the grand jury hearing in Greenwood. Papa Mose and Willie Reed also were called and they both traveled back to Mississippi from Chicago to testify. Papa Mose spent about twenty-four minutes with the grand jury, and Willie spent about nineteen. In the end, it seemed like a waste of time. Nothing seemed to matter to whites in the Delta. Despite the testimony, despite the admission by Bryant and Milam, the grand jury refused to indict. This was outrageous even to people who might have quibbled over whether there had been a strong enough case for conviction in the murder trial. This had been an open-and-shut case. But, of course, the grand jury sat within a couple of weeks of the Louis Till story, which had been widely circulated in the area. And that might have been all the “evidence” that was needed for people who wanted to rush to judgment. I was physically ill. The
Chicago Sun-Times
published an editorial on the Greenwood grand jury that pretty much said it all: “There was no lack of evidence that would have justified an indictment by any grand jury.… Somewhere along the line something went wrong—and it was a shameful, evil wrong.”

The NAACP had arranged to send me on a speaking tour of the West Coast. Ruby Hurley would also be featured on the November tour. The plan was for me to deliver speeches over a two-week period. As my public appearance schedule began to pick up, my father had agreed to go on the road with me. He took a leave from his job just to accompany me. He had been there for me in Mississippi during the trial. I had needed his help so desperately then. I promised that his expenses would be covered and that I would pay him for lost work. It was a great comfort to me that my father would be there during the trip and at all the speaking engagements. I was still getting threatening letters and I felt better knowing there would be somebody there to look out for me. Besides, I was so confused during that time that if somebody had asked where I was, where I had been, or where I was going next, well, I would have needed some prompting. The doctor had released me to travel, but I was still in such a state. My sense of time and place had gotten scrambled. But my daddy, oh, he could tell me everything. I mean, he was not an educated man, but he had a computer in his head and it really was something. He could keep details in order. He knew where I’d been, where I was, where I was going, everything. And, as important as anything else, he protected me from the crowd. He had to be there for me. I was happy he’d agreed.

There were a number of discussions about the details of the trip, the expenses and the amount I would receive. I had been offered fifteen hundred dollars for the two-week tour. Now, there were a lot of people
around me during this period. Rayfield certainly was always there. He was so good at handling details, keeping track of things, contacting people to make sure we got pictures, and advising me. He was a shrewd and tough negotiator. He had worked out the initial arrangement with the NAACP about handling the speaking appearances, and he seemed to always be thinking about plans for me. But there were others, as well. Many people were there to talk to me and to offer advice. A woman was taking care of my administrative affairs and handled most of the discussions with the NAACP about the West Coast trip. She also handled record keeping and, as important as anything else, tracking those expenses. There were quite a few new expenses to track. It was almost like running a little business. I had come to rely on the advice of others back then. I needed to be able to rely on them, since it was all I could do most of the time just to show up where I was told I should be. Show up and speak. At one point, my assistant looked over everything and told me that I couldn’t afford to make the Western trip for only fifteen hundred dollars. I guess I was trying to do too much—covering my father’s expenses and my own, her compensation, and all the rest. I heard from others at different points, too. There was so much that I was urged to think about. Would I return to work anytime soon? Could I even consider it? If not, then how would I live? What about the large debt that had piled up? Shouldn’t I be thinking about that, and about trying to prepare now for an uncertain future? And what about all those people who had made money off my name, off Emmett’s?

I had confidence in the NAACP and felt comfortable with our new arrangement, and that the money that was supposed to go to the organization was reaching it. There was nothing I would ever be able to do about the people who had taken advantage of me and the circumstances in the past. They would take care of themselves. But other considerations—ongoing living expenses and, now, operating costs—caused me to think. My goodness, the telephone bill alone had gone up to a couple of hundred dollars a month. I needed to know that I could make the trip out West and still take care of everything back home, as well as all the people. When my assistant told me that I’d wind up having to reach into my own pocket to make ends meet, well, I knew that wasn’t going to work.