In August 1955, two of the men who brutally murdered the young Emmett Till of Chicago visited the home of a Delta family in nearby Rulesville shortly thereafter.
Now a resident of Drew in Sunflower County, less than five miles from the plantation where Till was killed, an elderly woman, who asks to remain anonymous, recalls that summer night of her seventeenth year when her parents let JW in. Milam and Roy Bryant to his house. . Bryant was related to his mother by marriage; they were both loud and nervous, she reminded herself.
Ms. “Brown” recently stopped by to visit a black restaurant owner in Drew and told him that she felt it was important to share her story with him and other members of the black community.
“It’s finally the right time,” he told the restaurateur.
“My parents didn’t tell me then what was going on at the time. JW had a full brother, Bud, and I’m pretty sure he was with them too. I was in bed but I could hear their voices.”[1]
It was years later that her father confessed to the Drew woman that Milam and Bryant told him what they had done to Emmett Till.
“They knew the law was looking for them. They also said that Carolyn Bryant was with them when they killed Emmett Till. I don’t know when Bud joined them. I think they caught him later. He was a nicer person than his brother and I don’t think so.” that he had killed someone, I hope not.
When he awoke at dawn that same morning, the three men had left his family’s home. “I never knew what happened to them after they left our house. I think they knew the law was going to catch up with them. And I think they felt safe, since most of the officers were covering them anyway. I don’t know. I don’t know if they turned themselves in, let themselves be found, or if the sheriff picked them up and charged them.
“I still can’t believe how our family was put in so much danger; there was so much confusion after Emmett Till was killed. People in Drew, in black and white, were threatening to kill each other’s entire families. Some were threatening to kill like up to ten members of another person’s family as revenge.”[2]
Despite the fact that her parents hid Emmett Till’s killers and never turned them in, the Drew woman denies involvement.
“I know my parents would never have covered for them. The men came to our house and sat there all night. Later, my parents told me what was going on. But I would never want anyone to think that our family helped them.” “
Ms. Brown believes that “most whites in Drew and Ruleville felt the same way”.
“After the trial, the only support Milam and Bryant got came from the Klan because they were members. Most people wanted nothing to do with them; after all, they had killed a 14-year-old boy. Maybe not.” they intended to do it, but they killed him.”
On August 24, 1955, fourteen-year-old Till whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi, a small cotton-growing village in the Delta. Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager, did not understand that he had violated the unwritten laws of Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, brutally beat him, and then killed him. they shot. him in the head.
Although Till’s killers were arrested and charged with murder, both were quickly acquitted by an all-male, white jury. Shortly thereafter, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how Till was murdered, to a journalist.
The murder and trial horrified the nation and the world, and Till’s death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after her body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began after Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a city bus. Later, Parks would tell the young man’s mother how Till’s murder influenced her to take her personal position.
The failure of the federal government to get involved in the Till case made blacks and whites realize that if change was to come, they would have to do it themselves. Some historians describe the murder of young Emmett Till as the real spark that ignited widespread support for the movement.
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[1] A story that appeared in the September 3, 1955 Jackson Advocate suggested that three white men were, in fact, involved in the kidnapping, marking “the first suggestion that more people were involved in the kidnapping than Milam or Bryant let alone.” glimpse,” according to Christopher Metress, editor of a comprehensive book on the Emmett Till incident.
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2] Susan Klopfer interview on March 4, 2005 with a Sunflower County resident who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “Just a few years ago, our minister and his family were threatened when the minister tried to talk about integrating the church. They almost got kicked out of town.” Bud was probably with the group, as she suggested. Dr. TRM Howard’s version of the kidnapping and murder appeared in a small pamphlet in February 1956, Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till. The author was Olive Arnold Adams, the wife of Julius J. Adams, the editor of the New York Age, but Howard was her main source. He also wrote the foreword.” In addition to Time Bomb, a number of articles appeared in the California Eagle, a black newspaper in Los Angeles. “The author was a mysterious white southern reporter who wrote under the pseudonym Amos Dixon. Dixon made essentially the same thesis as Time Bomb but offered a more detailed description of the possible roles of Loggins, Hubbard, and Collins. He also alleged that another brother of Milam and Bryant, Leslie Milam (now deceased) participated in the crime,” wrote David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito (“Why It’s Different From The Emmett Till Murder Mystery Will Ever Be Solved,” History Red news, 04/26/04).
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