Civil Rights Events

Emmett Till -- Part Three

 

 

We have only what Bryant and Milam told William Bradford Huie after the two murderers had been acquitted of Emmett Till’s murder. 

 

The men portrayed Till as a sexually precocious youth who boasted of "having white women." Milam gave voice to the backed-in-a-corner rage of Southern white resistance. "What else could we do?" he said. "I like niggers—in their place—I know how to work 'em. But … they ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. … I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand'" (Sparkman 1).

 

Here is what Huie authored in Look Magazine.

 

They drove back to Milam's house at Glendora, and by now it was 5 a.m.. They had been driving nearly three hours, with Milam and Bryant in the cab and Bobo lying in the back.

 

Bobo wasn't afraid of them! He was tough as they were. He didn't think they had the guts to kill him.

 

Milam: "We were never able to scare him. They had just filled him so full of that poison that he was hopeless."

 

Back of Milam's home is a tool house, with two rooms each about 12 feet square. They took him in there and began "whipping" him, first Milam then Bryant smashing him across the head with those .45's. Pistol-whipping: a court-martial offense in the Army... but MP's have been known to do it.... And Milam got information out of German prisoners this way.

 

But under these blows Bobo never hollered -- and he kept making the perfect speeches to insure martyrdom.

 

Bobo: "You bastards, I'm not afraid of you. I'm as good as you are. I've 'had' white women. My grandmother was a white woman."

 

Milam: "Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers -- in their place -- I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you -- just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'"

 

So Big Milam decided to act. He needed a weight. He tried to think of where he could get an anvil. Then he remembered a gin which had installed new equipment. He had seen two men lifting a discarded fan, a metal fan three feet high and circular, used in ginning cotton.

 

Bobo wasn't bleeding much. Pistol-whipping bruises more than it cuts. They ordered him back in the truck and headed west again. They passed through Doddsville, went into the Progressive Ginning Company. This gin is 3.4 miles east of Boyle: Boyle is two miles south of Cleveland. The road to this gin turns left off U.S. 61, after you cross the bayou bridge south of Boyle.

 

Milam: "When we got to that gin, it was daylight, and I was worried for the first time. Somebody might see us and accuse us of stealing the fan."

 

Bryant and Big Milam stood aside while Bobo loaded the fan. Weight: 74 pounds. The youth still thought they were bluffing.

 

They drove back to Glendora, then north toward Swan Lake and crossed the "new bridge" over the Tallahatchie. At the east end of this bridge, they turned right, along a dirt road which parallels the river. After about two miles, they crossed the property of L.W. Boyce, passing near his house.

 

About 1.5 miles southeast of the Boyce home is a lonely spot where Big Milam has hunted squirrels. The river bank is steep. The truck stopped 30 yards from the water.

 

Big Milam ordered Bobo to pick up the fan.

 

He staggered under its weight... carried it to the river bank. They stood silently... just hating one another.

 

Milam: "Take off your clothes."

 

Slowly, Bobo pulled off his shoes, his socks. He stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, dropped his pants, his shorts.

 

He stood there naked.

 

It was Sunday morning, a little before 7.

 

Milam: "You still as good as I am?"

 

Bobo: "Yeah."

 

Milam: "You still 'had' white women?"

 

Bobo: "Yeah."

 

That big .45 jumped in Big Milam's hand. The youth turned to catch that big, expanding bullet at his right ear. He dropped.

 

They barb-wired the gin fan to his neck, rolled him into 20 feet of water.

 

For three hours that morning, there was a fire in Big Milam's back yard: Bobo's crepe soled shoes were hard to burn.

 

Seventy-two hours later -- eight miles downstream -- boys were fishing. They saw feet sticking out of the water. Bobo (Huie 1-14)

 

Here is a different version of the killing.

 

The men drove to a barn on the farm of Leslie Milam, J.W. Milam’s brother, near Drew, Mississippi. 

 

Willie Reed, who later would testify for the prosecution, saw at about 6:00 a.m. a white and green Chevrolet truck, with four white men riding in the cab and three black men standing in the back of the truck.  Reed saw an eighth person, a black boy (presumably Till), seated in the bed of the truck.  The truck, according to Reed, parked in front of the barn.  Minutes later, he said, he heard "hollering" and what sounded like "whipping" coming from the barn.  (In later interviews, Reed identified four men he saw entering the barn: Bryant and Milam, as well as two black men, including Levi "Too Tight" Collins (a truck driver for Milam).

 

Despite a different version of events offered by Bryant and Milam in their 1956 interview, Till was most likely shot and killed in Leslie Milam's barn. 

 

…

 

After the pickup left the farm, it stopped briefly at J. W. Milam's store in Glendora.  There, a witness noticed "blood running out of the bed of the truck and pooling on the ground."  When the dripping blood was pointed out to Milam, when he returned to his truck, J. W. claimed that he killed a deer.  When Milam was told it was not deer season, he allegedly pulled back the tarpaulin in the bed to reveal Till's body and said, "This is what happens to smart niggers." [FBI report, p. 64]  Milam, Bryant, and the others (including "Too Tight" Collins and Otha Johnson) loaded themselves back into the truck and left town.

 

Bryant and Milam decided to throw Till's body into the Tallahatchie River.  Before doing so, they stopped at a ginning company to steal a heavy fan that they planned to use to weight down the corpse.  They drove north toward Swan Lake, crossed the bridge over the Tallahatchie, and stopped on a dirt road, near a steep bank in the river.  The men tied the fan to Till's neck with barbed wire and rolled the dead fourteen-year-old into the river.

 

Three days later and eight miles downstream, a boy named Robert Hodges, who was fishing in the Tallahatchie, saw feet sticking out of the water.  The badly beaten and bloated body was pulled from the river and loaded into a boat.  Hodges and others observed a silver ring on one of the body's fingers.  Called to the scene, Mose Wright looked into the boat on the riverbank and identified the body of Emmett Till.  A black undertaker and his assistant lifted Till's body from the boat and placed it in a casket.  The undertaker's assistant gave the ring to Wright, who later handed it over to LeFlore County Deputy Sheriff John Ed Cothran.

 

…

 

Within a day after Till's disappearance, both Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam had been arrested for his abduction.  Both men admitted to taking Till from Wright's home, but insisted that they let him go in Money (Linder 16-18).

 

Nine years after the Huie Look Magazine article had been printed, journalist Randy Sparkman wrote: “So far, two surviving possible participants have emerged …: Henry Lee Loggins, 81, one of three African-Americans who worked for Milam and reportedly helped transport Till, witnessed his torment, and cleaned up the gore; and Carolyn Bryant Donham, 71, who may have waited in the car during the kidnapping” (Sparkman 2).

 

 

Passages cited:

 

Huie, William Bradford.  “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi.”  Look, January 1956.  Web.  <http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/till/confession.html.>

 

Linder, Douglass O.  “The Emmett Till Murder Trial: An Account.”  2012.  Web.  <http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/till/tillaccount.html.>

 

Sparkman, Randy.  “The Murder of Emmett Till: The 49-Year-Old Story of the Crime and How It Came to Be Told.”  Slate, June 21, 2005.  Web.  < http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2005/06/the_murder_of_emmett_till.html.>