The Lost Story of Emmett Till: Then & Now

foreign T was considered a leader among his friends he was not supposed to fly he whistle and scared us he scared us so bad this was the location where he heard the screams [Music] Ley no one knows exactly where the body went into the water Roy Bryant admitted that he had taken Emmett from his home this is the original warrant to have this space be brought back as close to the way it looked in 55 as possible he knew by testifying he could be killed for this he hand-picked the jury not guilty how long oh God will we have a double standard of Justice they began to piece together some federal violation there was a recommendation that should be indicted recommendation by the FBI today is the day that we'll never forget I know that his life can't be returned but I hope that his death will certainly start a movement these United States Emmett Till's death did start a movement the lost story of Emmett Till then and now one of the most shameful elements of this nation's past Dane bitter state on America [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] there's no sign to show you you're in Money Mississippi it's in leflore County in 1955 it was a town of around 400. fewer than that live here now drive right by what is now the relic of Bryant's Grocery and meat market [Music] great uncle Moe's writes home the site of Till's kidnapping is gone another home sits there now the church where moserite preached is but walls held together by brush story of the hate that was sown here in this fertile soil of the Mississippi Delta continues to be harvested a legacy to all who have died under the oppression of slavery and Jim Crow and Beyond a legacy personified in the lynching of Emmett Till Emmett was not just mine he was a universal child people were really able to see what had happened to a youngster simply because of hate and race discrimination I always felt bad because I I came back for surviving right right I feel guilty uh about that when things bad happened to you your heart is broken it's just it's shattered when you have a broken heart the heart heals but it leaves scar tissue in August 1955 14 year old Emmett Till joined his best friend and cousin wheeler Parker and his great uncle Moe's Wright on a train from Chicago to visit family and Money Mississippi eight days into his visit he was kidnapped by J.W Milam and Roy Bryant Emmett had whistled at Roy Bryant's wife Carolyn at the store they ran in money four days before man we could have died I mean just we couldn't believe it in 1955 a black boy whistling at a white woman in Mississippi was a grave error immediately recognized by his cousins who were there at the time he scared us half to death and we couldn't get out of town fast enough we all just made a beeline nobody said let's go and then we just made a b line for the car it was time to go because this is a death sentence when they got home they told no one three days passed and they forgot about it of course it was a apprehensive maybe the first day but after you know Thursday passed and Friday passed and nothing happened we forgot all about it I didn't think anymore about it that is until early Sunday morning I heard about 2 30 I hear them talking and I heard the noise you know the loud talking I heard him talking to you got two boys from Chicago and want to talk to the fat one they did the talk at the store I woke up and saw these two white men standing at the foot of my bed and I think Emmett got up and they told him to put this shoes I think you want to put the socks on anyway it was a it was pure hell I mean it was just it was horrible our world was turned upside down it was never the same again foreign [Music] Emmett Till It's believed J.W Milam and Roy Bryant brought him here to This Barn in Drew Mississippi Drew is about 30 miles from money in Sunflower County that day an 18 year old named Willie Reed saw Emmett the only place in 2004 the FBI brought Willie Reed back to this Barn you know this is the area when the FBI showed up this is this dentist Jeff Andrews bought the barn in 1992 and he still owns it today the FBI brought him here and he said this was the location where he saw where he heard the screams he didn't see three typings [Music] I saw him motion and say I was walking down this road right here and he pointed at the driveway you know if he heard that and he was this close I'm sure he probably didn't stick around too long so you know because that's you see how close proximity that is but you know this was the area here and and that that uh [Music] so this is the Black Bayou bridge on the south side of Glendora so the belief is that the murderers left the barn and Drew with till wrapped in a tarp either beaten within an inch of his life or perhaps even dead but then they brought him back to Glendora where they obtained the cotton gin fan and then brought him to this bridge and dropped him in the river through the Gap in these v-shaped girders right here the body of 14 year old Emmett Till weighed down by a gin fan was tossed into the water it's not clear exactly where Emmett Till's body was thrown or exactly where it was found but three days after his kidnapping Emmett Till's body was found it shouldn't have been found because they had waited they had it properly done to read it down but going downstreaming snagged imagine being 17 years old and fishing on a beautiful day like you might do any other time in your life and noticing two knees bobbing out of the Tallahatchie River that's exactly what happened when Emmett Till's body was discovered once Emmett's body was pulled out of the river Mamie till made three key decisions that cemented her son's Legacy as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement first she ordered his body back to Chicago I remember being was the one we wait stayed up all night wearing our body you come in from Mississippi [Music] and when it did come then she demanded that the body be open so they the world could see what they did to my boy maybe secondly ordered her son Emmett's casket remain open tens of thousands would file past it at Robert's Temple and see and when they opened the casket in the funeral home I remember a piece of his skull fell off and my photographer went over and reached over and picked it up and put it back on before he shot a picture and that picture maybe allowing that picture to be taken and then published by Jet Magazine was her third pivotal decision but she was a tough lady it was courageous it was very courageous picture's worth a thousand words I mean the world needed this shock they needed it I think it really let us see the ugly monster that race hatred is it's almost as if it was embodied in in his appearance and his physical appearance because it is a monster she changes everything in that moment he wants the world to see what they've done to my son foreign here and just the area where they found to worn at in early 2022 a filmmaker found the kidnapping warrant for the arrest of J.W Milam and Roy Bryant in these files at the leflore County Courthouse also named on the warrant Roy Bryant's wife Carolyn though she was never arrested when the FBI investigated in 2004 they asked Court officials in law enforcement to look for any documents with information related to the case the warrant never came up but current leflore County Clerk Elma stockstill as long-time experience in the clerk's office and with his files he had an idea where to look he could also verify its authenticity from my experience at second Clerk and I knew these was original of original papers and you see how old a brother they are so I knew from the fact that they was a rich original paper then I looked at the uh calls number up here all these case numbers and everything all this lined up with previous cases that I've seen from that particular time frame so I knew that there was authenticate authentic so after Emmett was kidnapped most Wright searched for Emmett himself he also went to see leflore County Sheriff George Smith who then went to see Roy Bryant Roy Bryant admitted that he had taken image from his home and let him loose taking it from his home was enough to establish kidnapping and he was arrested that was around two o'clock on Sunday August 28th according to the 2004 FBI report the next day according to that same report J.W Milam came by the leflore county jail and also admitted to taking till it's not used as a jail today but it was in 1955. and it's where Milam and Bryant waited until their trial in Tallahatchie County they were here when Emmett Till's body was found and they were then charged with Emmett Till's murder the trial was held here in Sumner in Tallahatchie County because Emmett Till's body was found here the Tallahatchie County Courthouse is still a working Courthouse the room where the trial of J.W Milam and Roy Bryant was held is still a working courtroom it was remodeled in the early 1970s and then in 2015 was intentionally restored to the way it would have looked back in 1955. so so this is important for a number of reasons [Music] I'm not forgetting what happened here what happened in our town in our community when we think very specifically about this trial in this case Benjamin Salisbury now gives tours of the courtroom and host talks about the trial and navigating the past it represents and how to move forward publicly and collectively talking about race and racism and publicly and collectively being mindful of how that has impacted us Mississippi in 1955 was reeling as was much of the South it was a police state it was like apartheid no question about that the Supreme Court Brown versus Board of Education decision in 1954 begat White Citizens councils bent on preserving segregated life in the south by November the councils had 65 000 members in Mississippi and would eventually grow to 208 000 members throughout the South the citizens councils are all around the state they're different than the clan in that they are more middle class and upper class they're very powerful that's where the action is as far as white opposition to integration they would generally refer to as the cucox Klan in coach and ties this is Dr Stephen Whitaker a Tallahatchie County native he wrote the first extensive review of the Emmett Till case for his master's thesis in 1963. in it he points out the primary concern segregation has had with integration was that black men would become romantically involved with white women in his opening chapter sex and segregation Whitaker cites Gunner myrtles an American dilemma sex becomes the principle around which the whole structure of segregation of the Negro is organized the Southern Man on the street responds to any plea for social equality with would you like to have your daughter Mary a negro ever since reconstruction there that's been pumped and pumped and um used to generate fear the other great fear that they had was that if black people were able to vote that they would take over and run the counties and run the state they saw the desegregation of public schools as a real threat to this way of life which is the racist euphemism for apartheid basically and they saw it as extending from schools to jobs to stores to neighborhoods to voting when Emmett Till ventured to Mississippi only four percent of eligible black voters were registered and not a single black person was registered to vote in Tallahatchie County despite 56 percent of the county being blacks of voting age so the tension stirred by the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court only began to boil by 1955 when the Supreme Court issued its implementation decision or Brown versus Board of Education 2 which ordered integration with all deliberate speed also in 1955 two African Americans were lynched for trying to register black people to vote George Lee and Lamar Smith was shot to death on the courthouse grounds in Brookhaven seven days before Emmett boarded his train in Chicago Bound for Mississippi white folks in the South were up in arms massive resistance is what they called it a reign of terror is what black folks called it and this is the environment that Emmett was walking into [Music] foreign September 19 1955. every defense attorney in town volunteered to represent Milam and Bryant according to press report the defense fund raised ten thousand dollars and an all-white jury was seated for his 1963 thesis Whitaker interviewed them all everyone treated me well everyone was very open about it all the lawyers both sides the judge all the two hours all gave me interviews and what Whittaker learned about the jury pool is eye-opening the man in charge of picking the list of jurors was the County Attorney the County Attorney at the time was John Whitten one of Milam and Bryant's defense attorneys he hand-picked the jury he assured that the list from which the jury was taken had only people that he was pretty certain were totally racist and who would think nothing of killing an African-American the Tallahatchie County district attorney was Gerald Chatham he requested help from the state to take on this case attorney and former FBI agent Robert Smith III was appointed as special prosecutor I'm very proud of my that my father took that stand nobody had ever really prosecuted a white person in Mississippi for killing a black person and Smith and Chatham had many challenges the hand-picked jury pool they may not have known about but they would have known they were not getting help from their own investigator Tallahatchie Sheriff h.c Strider Strider was a staunch segregationist we never have any trouble until some of our Southern go up north in the NAACP talks to him and they come back home Sheriff Strider was also running things in the courtroom and he demanded segregation even among the press the sheriff h.c Strider declared at the beginning of the trial that there would be no mixing no race mixing as he called it so the white journalists were not supposed to interact with the black journalists but what Strider didn't know was that not only were white journalists interacting with black journalists they were all working together to further the investigation of the case along with the NAACP and the sheriff of leflore County George Smith it all began with a tip to Dr trm Howard this guy named Frank Young [Music] be it information that people had witnessed African Americans had witnessed till being brought into equipment shed in a farm Dr Howard was a well-established doctor in civil rights activist based in the all-black town of Mound Bayou Mississippi this is the day before the trial so the trial was scheduled to occur on Monday this occurred on Sunday he gets uh naac people together like Medgar Evers amsy Moore ultimately goes to Black reporters and he says look we have evidence here that this had occurred we got to go find these Witnesses Simeon Booker and Moses Newsome were among those reporters I would drive it was Mega Evers who drove us to all those back back yard plantations and things where we were trying to find witnesses back there we changed clothes and we're gonna wearing something something like Plantation workers would used to be where we did round up a couple of people who did actually testifying the case and that's how people like Willie Reed were discovered and brought into trial because that was true Willie Reed Mamie till and some members of the black press also stated Dr trm Howard's compound in Mount Bayou so his house was here or it was over there no see where that house over that house that's where his house was burned down and mysteriously I guess right right Thousand Acres yeah I don't know if it was all continued back in there nothing is left of trm Howard's Mound Bayou home today but in 1955 it was quite the place and for those associated with the trial it was Secure it was highly secure because Mom Bayou is an all-black town and Howard had a 24-hour security that he'd had for quite some time he was heavily armed didn't know anything at all about Mom bio I didn't know it was an all-black town I didn't know that the people in mom bio did not tolerate any uh invasion of many kinds just like uh he's trying to get into white house because Willie Reed was a surprise witness at the trial his testimony a key Link in the case it won't establish the time and place of Acts of murder but it will connect the descendants with the crime he testified to seeing Emmett in the back of a 55 Chevy truck with two black men including one he knew Levi two tight Collins Reid testified he saw four white men in the cab of the truck and then to hearing a beating at the barn in Drew and seeing J.W Milam with a gun now later on in the morning did you see Mr J.W Milam out there where did you see him [Music] I passed by he came out to the well and was that JW Milam the man who was sitting over there yes sir did you see or hear anything as you passed by the bomb I can hit somebody hollering and I heard some licks like somebody was whipping somebody natural what what these people did with ourselves he said he don't think he could live with it he don't say he could have lived knowing that he heard all that noise he had all the head that child hauling and crying and don't say anything Willie Reed's Widow says what he witnessed bothered him his entire life that he would sometimes have night terrors and that he always stood by his decision to testify one thing that really touches me is that one of the witnesses 18 year old whether he this guy put his lights on he came in and it had the courage Moe's Wright famously testified first standing and pointing out both J.W Milam and Roy Bryant as the men who took Emmett from his home so he knew by testifying he could be killed for this but he said man has to do what a man has to do and he did it he did something that no other black man had ever done in Mississippi and lived to tell about it it was a a real climax I suppose the first time a black has ever appointed to a white person in Mississippi accusing him of a crime where he could be executed the defense's case hinged on disputing the identity of the body found in the Tallahatchie River as actually being that of Emmett Till Mamie till testified she saw her son's body and she had no doubt please state to the court and the jury whether you could identify the body there at the funeral home is that of your son Emma too I positively identify the body in the casket and later on when it was removed and placed on a slab has been that of my son Emmett Lewis too well maybe it was terrified to be there in Mississippi she knew that there was going to be an intensely hostile environment there and she walked into it what was my concern in the courtroom more or less a matter of getting in and out alive every day it was quite heated in that courtroom perhaps the star witnessed for the defense was Carolyn Bryant although she did not speak before the jury Carolyn Bryant testified that Emmett grabbed her hand when she reached for the money Mrs Bryant will you stand up and put my hands just where he grabbed you [Music] [Music] it was like this in other words he had his left arm on your back and his right arm on your hip yes [Music] and did he say anything to you then at the time he grabbed you there by the cash register Ed [Music] not a baby can't you take it the trial transcript was lost for almost 50 years the FBI found it during its investigation in 2004. it doesn't contain closing arguments but press reports at the time describe prosecutor Gerald Chatham raising his arms and shouting quote the first words offered in testimony were dripping with the blood of Emmett Till and defense attorney John Witten declaring quote every last Anglo-Saxon one of you men in this jury has the courage to set these men free special prosecutor Robert Smith was convinced of Milam and Bryant's guilt he knew this that they had murdered that young man in the teal they knew it the judge knew it and so my father and Gerald Chatham did everything I think you could have done to prosecute them they didn't pull any punches in the end the jury deliberated a little more than an hour one of them later explaining in press reports if we hadn't stopped to drink pop it wouldn't have taken that long but according to Stephen Whitaker it really wasn't that clear-cut in the Jury Room remember he interviewed all of the jurors in the early 1960s for his master's thesis the jury voted nine to three to quit there were three people on a jury voted guilty and had been assumed the jury was unanimous right away particularly since they bragged about their pot break delay in fact this is the first report of the jury having any real doubt and they voted on the second time they voted 11-1 and finally the third vote was 12 to zero Whitaker identified the last holdout as Bishop Matthews of Charleston and in his thesis he expanded on the jurors saying not a single one doubted that Milam and Brian had killed Emmett Till the three told me later on that they felt very bad about what they had done maybe till Bradley didn't wait for the verdict this is not a verdict we want to hear she could tell that it was going to be an acquittal we heard them announce the verdict not guilty on our way back to trm Howard's house they took me back to Clarksdale and I was able to get a taxi to take me to Memphis where we boarded a plane for Chicago I saw the journey as they came in the foreman took a little dirty strip of paper out of his pocket and read we find the defendants not guilty and I cried to the God of all ages and ask of him how long will God will we have a double standard of Justice Justice for the white man and a Justice for the Negron less than two months after JW Milam and Roy Bryant's acquittal a leflore county grand jury heard the case of kidnapping against Milam and Bryant Moe's Wright and Willie Reed returned to Mississippi to testify the floor County Sheriff George Smith testified as well but it wasn't enough the the floor County grand jury did not find a true bill in connection with the Emmett Till kidnapping cage no indictment two months later in January 1956 Milam and Bryant confessed to killing Emmett Till in an article for Luke magazine they committed the murder and told me they did and told me how they did William Bradford Huey paid four thousand dollars for their story in that account Milam and Bryant said they acted alone they made no mention of the barn and Drew starting two days after JW Milam and Roy Bryant's acquittal for Emmett Till's murder trm Howard began urging J Edgar Hoover to investigate the case ultimately according to David and Linda Beto's book on trm Howard it was Juanita Mitchell with the National Council of negro women who got Federal action there's a tour of FBI headquarters and she's on the tour and she keeps pestering him she asked Hoover directly about the additional men Willie Reed had mentioned on the truck with them until the night he was killed he writes to one of his assistants in the FBI and says well look into this that led to a slight review including looking into a rumor that Levi two tight Collins and another man were hidden away to keep them from testifying two of the Witnesses were being held in protective custody and share strider's jail in Charleston according to the 2004 FBI report prosecutor Robert Smith did search for Collins and the other man at the Charleston Jail at the time of the trial and the report says that search during the trial was basically the scope of the FBI review after the trial and that ended the FBI involvement at the time until 2004. documentaries in 2003 and 2005 mentioned additional people involved that were still alive those details and a review of the case by civil rights legal Advocate Alvin Sykes led the FBI to open the case once again and this time the investigation was much more robust part of it involved Emmett Till's body being exhumed to prove that the body buried at Baroque Cemetery in Alsip Illinois was actually Emmett's the DNA test improved to the state of Mississippi that there was indeed immediboro the case also included scores of interviews and an extensive re-examination of the facts the trial transcript was discovered a gun believed to be used was identified the 2004 FBI report never confirmed if the two witnesses including two Ty Collins were hidden away somewhere but Stephen Whitaker did through his stepfather NZ Trapp he confirmed it to me when I was yeah it was very very many times after that NZ trout was Sheriff h.c strider's Deputy in 1955. he said nothing about the hidden Witnesses during the trial but had no problem opening up later my stepfather knew they were in jail they were in jail under assumed names so they could not testify thank you and they couldn't be forced to testify or allowed to testify the 2004 FBI report also points to Greater involvement By Carolyn Bryant it shows Carolyn Bryant saying quote sometime during the night Roy Bryant and J.W Milam appeared at the home slash store with Emmett Till the night Emmett was kidnapped so that she could identify him in the report her response is redacted we had gone through all of this gathered all of the information to state of Mississippi still came out said that just wasn't enough information to bring an indictment against Columbine there was a recommendation that should be indicted a recommendation by the FBI but of course the grand jury didn't see that there was enough evidence to connect FBI investigators felt the evidence was strong the FBI investigated between 2004 and 2006 turned over a massive file to the district attorney in Mississippi massive meaning like 8 000 pages of documents that had been put together in 2007 Joyce Childs the district attorney for the Mississippi Delta sought a charge of manslaughter against Carolyn Bryant in the death of Emmett Till a leflore county grand jury refused to indict in 2017 the FBI reviewed the case again this time after an account of a confession By Carolyn Bryant in a book by Timothy Tyson called the blood of Emmett Till according to the FBI Bryant denied making a confession despite the fact that Timothy Tyson published what he purported was her confession in the end the FBI found no evidence no credible evidence as they put in their report to support what was published in Timothy Tyson's book the federal investigation into the lynching of Emmett Till was officially over today is a day that we'll never forget [Music] officially the image hill case has been closed after six to six years this is a family that's waited 66 years to learn who would answer for Emmett and now we know nobody Emmett Till's story continues to resonate in 2022 journalists from The Daily Mail found Carolyn Bryant living in Kentucky with her son they reported she suffers from cancer and is in hospice care earlier that same year someone leaked an unpublished Memoir By Carolyn Bryant written in 2008 it's called I am more than a wolf whistle in it Bryant stands by her story and declares quote I always felt like a victim as well as Emmett he paid dearly with the loss of his life I paid dearly with an altered life does she tell the truth about what happened at the store in the manuscript she not only stands by that story but she expands on it in ways that to me suggests that their is No Remorse you can't don't have an animosity ill will I hate you can't have that there's one thing we don't have toward her you know the levered by the filmmaker and the leflore county courthouse that same year was never executed in 1955 and could not be executed in 2022. and while there's no statute of limitations for kidnapping under Mississippi Law today there was a two-year statute of limitations at the time the warrant was issued [Music] after more than 200 failed attempts to Outlaw lynching Congress is finally succeeding in taking the long overdue action by passing the Emmett Till anti-lynching act Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush sponsored the legislation I wouldn't have named it and mail after a more deserving uh example of relenting the horrors of Linden the Senate has now finally addressed one of the most shameful elements of this nation's past by making lynching a federal crime that it took so long as a stain a bitter stain on America into a law what means that you know America is has made a statement there is something that has emerged that we can take some solace in and that is that the name Emmett Till is going to live on in the context of Justice every time somebody is brought to Justice in the case of a lynching as it's defined in the law the name of the till will be spoken again and ultimately Emmett Till's story will be kept alive his life remembered a legacy the verdict was unjust but because of that verdict it is still memory and Legacy is still alive well you need to get the truth out there that's why each other so the truth the real truth and somebody will believe it for him to mean more to me than for him just to have died [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] those sites are important and they are heavy here in Chicago we can learn more about Emmett Till's life and we can celebrate the determination of his mother who refused to let America turn away from a gross intolerable Injustice her bravery and strength in 1955 helped Inspire and Spark the Civil Rights Movement the clerk will report the title of the bill Senate 450 an actual War posthumously than Congressional gold medal to Emmett Till in Mamie till Mobley foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: NBC Chicago

Views: 519,923

Keywords: Emmett Till, Emmett Till documentary, Emmett till documentary nbc, nbc emmett till

Id: vG3vSLLnHH8

Length: 42min 20sec (2540 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023