emmett till, Exercises of Law

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DEVERY S. ANDERSON Foreword by Julian Bond

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

EMMETT TILL

The Murder That Shocked

the World and Propelled the

Civil Rights Movement

3

Murder Heard Round the World

Mose and Elizabeth Wright arrived in Sumner around sunrise Sunday morn- ing, still shaken. Crosby Smith was shocked to see his early morning visitors and listened intently as they rehashed the nightmare they had witnessed at their home a few hours earlier, where strangers burst in and kidnapped their nephew, Emmett Till, at gunpoint.^1 They had not been in Sumner long before Mose drove back home, with Smith following in his own truck. Elizabeth, however, stayed behind. In fact, she was so traumatized that she never again returned to Money—not even to retrieve her belongings. When Mose and Smith arrived at the Wright home that morning, they saw that Emmett was still missing but found the remain- ing boys safe.^2 The two men then kept watch on the front porch, holding out hope that their abducted nephew would soon return unharmed. That pros- pect grew dimmer with each passing minute, however, and there was a ghostly silence while they waited in vain. “I guess we was out there from around 8: in the morning ’til way past noon,” Smith noted, “and not even a dog walked past that house.”^3 When Curtis Jones woke up that morning, he vaguely recalled the commo- tion from the night before, but thought for a moment he may have dreamed it. He went out onto the porch, learned what had happened, and immediately went to the home of a neighbor to call Chicago and report the abduction to his mother, Willie Mae. It would fall to her to pass the news to Mamie Bradley. 4 Talk of the abduction began spreading throughout Money Sunday morn- ing, and soon, both white and black neighbors began congregating at the Wright home to comfort the distraught preacher. “The people kept coming,” Mose Wright said, “and we prayed and prayed.” 5

Mamie Bradley had not left for her trip to Omaha yet. She felt tired after Emmett left for Mississippi and wanted to take a day just to relax first. That day turned into seven, and she spent much of the week sleeping and simply feeling lonely for her son. By the weekend, she decided she would not leave

In Black and White

until she first heard from him. On Saturday, August 27, she received his letter, which lifted her spirits. That night, she went out with a friend until around 11:00 p.m., then hosted several others who dropped by her house. They talked and laughed until early in the morning. After her company left, she laid down, intending to get up for church, but at 9:30, her phone rang, and with that call came the news that would change her life. The caller, crying, could say very little. “This is Willie Mae. I don’t know how to tell you—Bo—they came and got him last night.” With that, the caller abruptly hung up, leaving Mamie alone to process the words she had just heard, words that came out of nowhere, but which left her stunned and confused. She tried to collect herself, but Willie Mae’s evasive message left her with more questions than answers. At the same time, it was frighteningly clear that Emmett had been kidnapped and was presumably still missing in Mississippi.^6 By instinct, Mamie immediately phoned her mother. Alma began to panic also but told Mamie to come right over. Too upset to drive, Mamie phoned her boyfriend, Gene Mobley, who agreed to drive her. However, after waiting for what seemed like forever, Mamie started to leave by herself. As she backed out of her driveway, Gene finally arrived, got into the car, slid behind the wheel, and together they headed to Alma’s. At Sixty-Third Street and Halstead, Mamie again lost patience, made Gene pull over, and traded places with him. After racing through red lights and stop signs, they arrived at Alma’s house at 1626 West Fourteenth Place.^7 Mamie discovered upon arriving that Alma had already made some phone calls but so far had learned nothing. After the mother and daughter took time to comfort each other, they tried to get a call to Mose Wright by phoning his landlord, Grover Frederick, but this proved useless. “The man said he was too old to hear,” said Mamie about that frustrating experience. “He didn’t have a pencil. He didn’t know where the paper was. He was just in a helpless condi- tion. He couldn’t even call anybody to the phone who could take the message.”^8 Later, Alma called her brother, Crosby, who told her all he knew. By this time, family began to arrive at Alma’s, including Willie Mae, who shared what little else her son Curtis had told her about the kidnapping. Mamie now learned for the first time that her son had allegedly whistled at a white woman.^9 The Argo Temple Church of God in Christ, Mamie’s congregation, received word of the kidnapping and said a prayer for the family during its Sunday service. But for Mamie and Alma, this Sabbath would remain a day of wait- ing and worry, with no apparent comfort on the horizon. Mamie began call- ing Chicago newspapers and reported the abduction, which proved to be a wise move. Soon, the family members gathering at Alma’s were joined by local

In Black and White

young boys. Roy served as a paratrooper during the Korean War, but never left the United States during his service. 14 After Bryant moved to Money and took over this family store in early 1954, he got into a dispute with a neighbor- ing white merchant who had agreed to close his grocery each day in the early afternoon. When the man reneged, Bryant threatened him at gunpoint.^15 Sunday afternoon, Sheriff Smith and Deputy Sheriff Cothran set out to question Bryant in Money. When they arrived at his store at 2:00 p.m., they learned he was still asleep in the living quarters. His wife and sons were gone, but other family members were present. In the apartment upstairs lived Mon- ey’s postmaster, but it is unknown if she was present at the time. Cothran brought the suspect outside, and Smith questioned Bryant alone while they sat in the patrol car. Smith, who reconstructed their conversation a few days later, did not pull any punches. “What did you want to go down there and get that little boy for?” he asked. “I don’t know, but I went and got him,” admitted Bryant. “What did you do with him?” “My wife said he wasn’t the right one and I turned him loose at the store,” claimed Bryant. Smith thought that was odd. “Why didn’t you take him back home?” “I thought he knew the way home.” Bryant’s confession was enough for Smith to arrest him on kidnapping charges and book him into the Leflore County jail. Bryant went willingly after Smith allowed him to change clothes.^16 Milam’s arrest occurred the next day after he went to the sheriff ’s office at around noon.^17 He went to Greenwood on his own that day, and Cothran spot- ted him outside the window. “Lookey yonder George,” urged Cothran to his boss. Sheriff Smith looked through the window and saw that this was their man. “Oh dog gone let’s go get him. That’s Milam.” 18 Milam had gone to Greenwood with the intent of turning himself in to authorities in order to keep Bryant from “running his mouth” off and devi- ating from the story that they had rehearsed.^19 Cothran questioned him on the way to the jail, and Milam admitted abducting the boy but, like Bryant, claimed he let him loose. Milam also failed to implicate anyone else, not even his jailed brother. He was then booked and placed in a separate cell on a differ- ent floor from Bryant. Sheriff Smith also issued an arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant, based on Mose Wright’s statement that he heard what sounded like a woman’s voice outside during the kidnapping.^20 That same day, news of the abduction appeared on the front page of one Chicago newspaper and several others in Mississippi. The Chicago Daily

Murder Heard Round the World

Tribune’s story, prepared on Sunday after reporters visited Mamie at her moth- er’s home, quoted Deputy Cothran, who said that Till “reportedly had had an argument with Mrs. Bryant at the Bryant store.” Mississippi papers reporting the story on Monday included the Clarksdale Press Register, Delta Democrat- Times, Greenwood Commonwealth, Jackson Daily News, Laurel Leader-Call, McComb Enterprise-Journal, and Jackson State Times. Most of them reported that Till was kidnapped because he had allegedly made “ugly remarks” to the woman. They also noted that three men were involved, two of whom entered the house and abducted Till at gunpoint. The Delta Democrat-Times said that Till “said something to offend Bryant’s wife.” Only one paper, the Greenwood Commonwealth, identified J. W. Milam as a second suspect, reporting his arrest just before press-time by placing the breaking news in a paragraph above the story. The Commonwealth also named five of the youth who were with Till on the evening of the incident at the store. The Tribune failed to mention the pres- ence of a woman in the car who identified the boy, as did some of the Missis- sippi papers. In these first reports, no one mentioned the wolf whistle. With all the focus on Milam and Bryant, the third man who accompanied the suspects to Wright’s home remained unknown and was, in fact, still at large.^21 Mamie Bradley likely read the Chicago Daily Tribune article, which pro- vided some hope that the men who took her son had released him, as they claimed. “In the back of my mind was the hope that Bo had slipped away from his abductors and was hiding, afraid, in the home of some colored people,” she said, “and I kept hugging this hope close to me.” Yet Deputy Cothran’s suspi- cion, quoted in the same paper, that he feared “some harm has been done to the boy” meant that Mamie had to prepare for the worst. However, Monday proved too busy to dwell on that as she continued to seek information about her missing son. She was not alone. Her stepfather, Henry Spearman, enlisted the help of his nephew, Rayfield Mooty, a local union leader and competent organizer, who introduced Mamie to officials at the local NAACP office. They provided her access to their own legal counsel, attorney William Henry Huff, who was also an expert on extradition cases.^22 All of this was helpful, but Mamie was over 600 miles from her son’s last- known whereabouts. Feeling restless, helpless, and growing more impatient, she nearly boarded a train to Mississippi herself before her uncle Crosby per- suaded her to wait until he attempted one last time to try to arrange contact with Mose Wright.^23 That evening, more information came as sixteen-year-old Wheeler Parker arrived back in Chicago. Parker, who had accompanied Emmett Till to Mississippi nine days earlier, had left the Delta on the 4:30 a.m. train, too scared to stay any longer.^24 His uncle Thelton Parker Sr. had taken him to the home of another uncle, William Parker, in Duck Hill, where Wheeler boarded the train for home. When the

Murder Heard Round the World

City of New Orleans for Mississippi the following morning if she wished.^32 The waiting and wondering continued. “We stood there. We sat there. We waited for... three days trying to find out what had happened to Emmett,” Mamie said. This took its toll on Alma, who finally collapsed in an emotional climax to the three-day ordeal. It was at this moment, recalled Mamie, “when I realized for the first time in my life, I was going to have to stand up on my feet and be a woman. A real one.”^33 Beginning Wednesday, August 31, she would need all the strength she could muster. That morning, between 6:30 and 7:00, near the town of Philipp in Tal- lahatchie County, seventeen-year-old Robert Hodges was fishing in the Talla- hatchie River near a spot called Pecan Point. While inspecting his trotline, he noticed something in the distance. It was a pair of human legs protruding up above the surface of the water. Hodges checked on his lines, went home, and told his father of his awful discovery. The senior Hodges got word to his land- lord, B. L. Mims. Someone else then notified County Sheriff H. C. Strider.^34 Tallahatchie County deputy sheriff Garland Melton was the first official to arrive at the scene. Mims came, bringing his own boat, and he and Melton took it out to try to retrieve the body. Robert Hodges and Mims’s brother, Charlie Fred, followed in another boat. When they approached the half-sub- merged corpse, Mims could see that it was that of a black person. Realiz- ing they would need a rope to help free it from a snag, they sent one of the boats back to get one. Shortly, with rope in hand, Mims and Melton began the arduous job of retrieving the body by tying the rope around the feet and ankles, pulling the body loose, and then towing it to shore. Melton held the rope, and Mims steered until they arrived at a shallow area near the river- bank. As they brought the body to land, they discovered that barbed wire had been wrapped around the neck and tied to a cotton gin fan in an obvious attempt to weigh the body down. As they placed the body in a boat, part of the skull fell off onto the floor. The head had obviously been crushed in by something—or someone.^35 Sheriff Strider arrived at the river about 9:15 a.m. and then notified the Leflore County sheriff ’s office.^36 Sheriff George Smith was in Jackson for the opening day of the annual Tennessee and Mississippi Sheriffs’ and Peace Offi- cers Association convention, but office deputy N. L. McCool informed Smith’s deputy, John Cothran, of the situation, and Cothran left right away, arriving at the river about 10:00 a.m. The officers immediately assumed that the body retrieved from the Tallahatchie River was that of Emmett Till, now missing for three days.^37 As Strider approached the body, he was met with an odor so strong that he could not get near enough to examine it. He summoned the black undertaker Chester Miller, manager of the Century Burial Association in Greenwood,

In Black and White

who came to the scene to lend a hand. When Miller arrived, he set off two deodorant bombs to rid the scene of the smell, and even sprayed the entire corpse with a deodorizing liquid.^38 What the authorities saw in the boat was ghastly. The body was naked, had been badly beaten, and, due to the effects of the river, was heavily decomposed and bloated. Strider said the head had been penetrated by a bullet hole above the right ear, and that the face was “cut up pretty badly like an ax was used.” It appeared to him that the body had been in the river about two days.^39 He described the tongue as sticking out of the mouth three inches, and that “the left eyeball was almost out, enough to almost fall out. And the right one was out, I would say, about three-quarters of an inch.”^40 The river and the force of debris obviously caused some damage to the body, and the weight of the gin fan may have caused many of the fractures to the head, yet there was no mis- taking that the victim had been tortured. One officer at the scene said that in his eight years of law enforcement, this was the “worst beating I’ve seen.”^41 Mose Wright was gathering wood when Cothran and Tallahatchie deputy sheriff Ed Weber brought him news of the discovery. Wright accompanied them back to the river to perform the dreaded task of identification. The dep- uties also picked up a boy in Philipp whom they did not know but who was able to guide them to the right location at the riverbank. When they arrived, they saw Melton; Strider; Strider’s twenty-three-year- old son, Clarence; and another Tallahatchie County deputy named A. K. Smith all waiting. Wright approached the scene solemnly. Walking toward the body, he told Cothran even at a distance of around fifteen to twenty yards that it “show looks like him,” but as he got closer, with the corpse positioned face- down, he could not be sure.^42 Someone there turned it over so that Wright could get a better look. “That’s him,” Wright said immediately. He elaborated several weeks later as he reflected back on that moment that “I never saw anything like that in my life.” He thought about the fun-loving boy who had just spent a week at his home. “There was Bobo who used to have such a good appetite and who never sassed in my house, not once. There he was dead with his head looking like he had been hit with a sledge hammer.” 43 Wright watched as Miller’s assistant, Simon Garrett, removed a silver ring from the middle finger of the right hand and gave it to his boss. Miller then placed it on the floor of the ambulance. Two black men took the heavy gin fan and put it into Cothran’s car, soiling the car with mud and water. When Miller learned that there was a relative of the victim present, he asked Wright if he would identify the body for him, as he had for the sheriff. Wright told Miller that the body was indeed that of Emmett Till. 44 Miller and Garrett began the process of removing the body, first by wrap- ping it in brown paper and placing it in a casket. Because the body was so

In Black and White

as that’s official, we’re going to charge those men with murder.”^50 After Miller and Garrett laid the body out at their funeral home, police photographer Charles A. Strickland arrived and snapped some pictures. Greenwood pathol- ogist Luther Otken also came by and gave the body a brief examination. 51 Overall, the investigation was informal and hurried. A Leflore County justice of the peace explained a few days later that “it was not exactly an inquest,” instead calling it “more of a postmortem. We decided he was dead, killed by a bullet.”^52 There was no attempt to perform an autopsy. If the idea was dis- cussed at all, Mississippi officials likely rejected it, believing that the heavy state of decomposition made such an examination impossible. With their so-called inquest over, law enforcement officials released the body to Emmett Till’s Mississippi relatives. Unaware of Mamie’s intent to ship it home, Chester Miller, with Till’s remains in his hearse, was soon on his way to the East Money Church of God in Christ, with instructions to bury the body immediately.^53 With little time to prepare, Mose Wright summoned men from the church to help dig a grave while he prepared for a brief funeral ser- vice. This was all happening within three hours of the discovery of the body, and no one in Chicago knew anything about it. 54 Curtis Jones was picking cotton at a relative’s field when Maurice Wright pulled up in the family Ford to tell him that Emmett was dead. Jones got into the car, and the boys drove out to the church. While the crew was digging, Jones convinced his grandfather that Alma would be opposed to the local burial. Wright agreed to halt the digging and called Chicago.^55 A series of calls got the news to Mamie, who became outraged at this attempt to bury her son in Mississippi without her permission or even her knowledge, and she became all the more determined to get him home. Alma called Crosby Smith again, alerting him to the situation. Smith agreed to intervene and promised to get the body to Chicago if he had to pack it with ice, put it into his truck, and drive it there himself.^56 He then drove to Money. “I got there and had the deputy sheriff with me. He told them that whatever I said, went.” And it was just in time—the coffin was still in the churchyard, and the grave was partly dug. “They were getting ready to spill the body into that two-foot hole. He hadn’t even been embalmed.” 57 With the local burial thwarted, Smith asked Miller to prepare the body for shipment. Feeling terrified over the situation and fearing the possibility of repercussion, Miller refused to keep it overnight. “They gave me strict orders not to bring this body back to town, and I’m not going to take it back to town,” he declared adamantly. 58 It is not entirely clear why officials in Mississippi were so anxious for such a speedy burial. Over the years Mamie Bradley accused Sheriff Strider

Murder Heard Round the World

of ordering an immediate interment in order to spare Mississippi from the embarrassment of the brutality of the murder. Although there is little reason to doubt such a motive, Strider justified his actions by citing more practical concerns. An attendant at the Century Burial Association said the body “was in such bad shape [meaning embalming was an impossibility] it couldn’t be shipped.”^59 This seemed to be Mose Wright’s understanding as well. Miller told him that they would have to hurry things up because “the body was in such shape it wouldn’t keep.” 60 Miller did reluctantly take Till’s corpse back to Greenwood, but soon an attendant from a funeral home in Tutwiler came by prearrangement to retrieve it. Chick Nelson, the white mayor of Tutwiler and manager of the mortuary, agreed to prepare the body and also made shipping arrangements with A. A. Rayner in Chicago. Crosby Smith contacted the railroad. 61 Unaware of this intervention, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger erroneously reported the next day that Emmett Till had been buried in Money.^62

The discovery of the body set off a storm of protest, anger, and sympathy, and the kidnapping-turned-murder became a national story. Dr. T. R. M. Howard, civil rights leader and founder of the Regional Councils of Negro Leadership, talked to reporters while on business in Chicago. “There will be hell to pay in Mississippi. Decent citizens are not going to continue to be treated like this.” 63 Howard himself was a Mississippian living in the all- black town of Mound Bayou. The NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, Medgar Evers, simply cried. Each murder he dealt with affected him, but because Till was so young, Evers actually shed tears.^64 Shortly before 4: p.m., Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, sent a telegram to Mississippi governor Hugh White, stating that his organization, “together with all decent citizens throughout the Nation call upon you to use all the powers of your office to see that the lynchers of 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till are brought to justice.” He added that “we cannot believe that respon- sible officials of the state of Mississippi condone the murdering of children on any provocation.”^65 That same day, Wilkins used less restraint in a public statement. “It would appear from this lynching that the State of Mississippi has decided to maintain white supremacy by murdering children.” If that was not enough to get the southern blood boiling, he tried a little harder. “The killers of the boy felt free to lynch him because there is in the entire state no restraining influence of decency, not in the state capital, among the daily newspapers, the clergy nor any segment of the so-called better citizens.” Unable to resist a further jab at White, Wilkins continued: “We have protested to Governor

Murder Heard Round the World

murder.”^74 Tallahatchie County sheriff Strider said that he would “seek speedy prosecution” of Milam and Bryant.^75 Leflore County deputy sheriff Cothran told the New York Post: “None of them are getting any sympathy around here. Everybody’s upset about this. They don’t understand how anybody could be so lowdown as to do such a thing—and for such a little cause, too.” However, there was irony in his attempt to clear up northern misconceptions about southern race relations. “Northerners always think that we don’t care what white folks do to the niggers down here, but that’s not true. The people around here are decent, and they won’t stand for this. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. And we’re going to get a conviction, too.”^76 The Tuskegee Institute, which had not recorded a lynching since 1951, announced that it was probing the Till case to determine whether it would be so classified (it was also investigating the recent murders of Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith).^77 The last thing Mississippi needed, while in the national spotlight, was new lynching statistics, as Governor White knew very well. It is not surprising, then, that Robert Patterson, executive secretary of the proseg- regationist Citizens’ Council, sought to distance his group from any perceived involvement. He stated publicly: “This is a very regrettable incident. One of the primary reasons for our organization is to prevent acts of violence.” He denied that the murder was connected to his or any similar group. Luckily for Patterson, neither Milam nor Bryant was a member of the Citizens’ Council.^78 Not sure yet under whose jurisdiction the investigation would fall, Gov- ernor White separately wired District Attorneys Gerald W. Chatham, of Tal- lahatchie County, and Stanny Sanders, of Leflore County. White was, he said, “very much distressed over reported murder of Till Negro. If in your district, I urge complete investigation and prosecution of guilty parties.” 79 Sanders told the press that a thorough investigation would continue until they could determine where the murder occurred. However, jurisdiction was transferred to Chatham almost immediately because the body had been discovered within Tallahatchie County borders. Because it was found ten miles into the county, Sheriff Strider reasoned, it was probably dumped there. “It couldn’t have floated up the river.”^80 Chatham, of the Seventeenth Judicial District, was already planning to present the case to a grand jury early the following week. He responded immediately to White: “I am in constant touch with officials of Tallahatchie and Leflore Counties and am confident that we have sufficient evidence to justify indictments against accused in Till murder when grand jury convenes in Sumner Monday.”^81 Chatham announced publicly that the grand jury would hear the evidence and make its decision no later than Tuesday. Because the fall court would begin in early September, he believed that a trial in the Till case would likely

In Black and White

not take place until the spring term of court, which would not start until March 1956. Chatham, who did not run for reelection, would by then be out of office.^82 Reporters descended upon the Leflore jail Thursday to get a look at the suspects in the case now making waves throughout the nation. Neither Bryant nor Milam would speak to them, however, and even refused to allow photos. “I haven’t a thing to say,” said Bryant, who added, politely, “I’m glad to have met you all.” Milam, nearly naked in his sweltering cell, responded similarly, telling reporters, “It’s hot in here,” and referring them to Greenwood defense attorney Hardy Lott. When questioned, Lott said that he had not been retained, but had consulted with the two men. It was probably on Lott’s advice that the sus- pects refused to speak to the press. In fact, they were not speaking to anyone. Although they admitted to the kidnapping at the time of their arrests, once a body surfaced they went silent. “We don’t know what Till is supposed to have said to Mrs. Bryant, as we can’t find her, and the two men won’t tell us a thing,” said Cothran to reporters.^83 Emmett Till’s corpse still lay in a mortuary in Tutwiler. When it arrived the day before, Chick Nelson saw that it was in much worse shape than he had anticipated. Had he known, he insisted, he would never have agreed to pre- pare it. His embalmer, Harry D. Malone, had to use twenty times the standard amount of embalming fluid in an attempt to preserve the body. 84 Malone later explained that because the normal intravenous procedure was impossible, he instead immersed the corpse in formaldehyde for thirty-six hours and cut several incisions in the flesh in order to release the gases and allow the pre- servative to enter. Once that process was completed, the body was placed in a plastic bag and enclosed in a casket that Malone described as the “finest” that they had. 85 It was then covered with padding, and placed into a large redwood box for shipping. Chester Miller drove to Tutwiler and helped load the box tagged “Emmett Till” on the train. By late evening Thursday, it was on its jour- ney home, accompanied by Crosby Smith, Elizabeth Wright, and Curtis Jones. It was scheduled to arrive in Chicago the following morning.^86

On Friday, Illinois governor Stratton added his voice to the growing num- ber of high officials speaking out, and instructed his attorney general, Latham Castle, to urge Mississippi authorities to thoroughly investigate the mur- der.^87 Indeed, law enforcement officers in Leflore and Tallahatchie Counties were still searching the area where Emmett Till had been found, looking for new clues in the crime. Sheriff Smith and District Attorney Stanny Sanders, who both covered Leflore County where the kidnapping occurred, asked the Greenwood Commonwealth to publicize a photo of the cotton gin fan used to weigh down the body in an attempt to locate the owner and zero in on

In Black and White That said, the Mississippi press was also quick to voice contempt for the condemnations hurled by outsiders—most noticeably the NAACP—which seemed to indict all Mississippians in the killing. A front-page editorial appeared in the Greenwood Commonwealth on September 2 responding to the harsh statements made by Roy Wilkins and Mamie Bradley just after the body had been discovered. “This deplorable incident has made our section the tar- get of unjustifiable criticism, thoughtless accusations, and avenging threats,” it declared. To Mamie, “we offer our sympathy and express our deep regret that this terrible thing has happened to her.” However, “her determination to see that ‘Mississippi is going to pay for this,’ charging the entire state with the guilt of those who took the law in their own hands is evidence of the poison selfish men have planted in the minds of people outside the South.”^94 For the NAACP, there was no sympathy at all. The writer blasted Wilkins’s attacks upon his state, but had apparently forgotten that there had been two other racially motivated murders recently committed in Mississippi: “On the basis of one murder it [the NAACP] has judged the character, honor and integrity of the entire population.” With this rebuke of Wilkins and Mamie Bradley, the Mississippi press, which had been reporting community outrage over the murder in its stories since Wednesday, became defensive and, going forward, notably less sympathetic. Resentment clearly developed over what most white southerners saw as outside agitation, and Mississippi journalists began carefully orchestrating what they wrote and juxtaposed images in such a way as to shape negative public opinion toward Till in the weeks ahead.^95

The Chicago Sun-Times announced on Friday morning that Emmett Till’s body would arrive at the Central Street Station at 9:00 a.m. When Mamie Bradley arrived to meet the box carrying her murdered son, the station was already filled with onlookers and reporters. Entering the station in a wheel- chair, Mamie was escorted by a support team consisting of her father, John Carthan (who had come in from Detroit); Gene Mobley; Bishop Louis Ford; Bishop Isaiah Roberts; and some cousins, including Rayfield Mooty. When the train arrived, Mamie got up from her wheelchair and quickly crossed three sets of tracks to meet the baggage car that held her son’s remains. Press pho- tographers snapped pictures of the grief-stricken mother as she collapsed. “My darling, my darling. I would have gone through a world of fire to get to you. I know I was on your mind when you died,” she cried. The family formed a ring and watched solemnly as men removed the large pine box from the train and loaded it onto a flatbed truck. Mamie spoke again, assuring her deceased son that he “didn’t die for nothing.” The box was opened as it sat on the truck, and the casket removed and placed into a hearse for the trip to Rayner’s.^96

Murder Heard Round the World Mamie had already talked to Ahmed Rayner by telephone and said she wanted to see the body once the casket arrived. Rayner at first refused, stat- ing his own obligation, by verbal and written promise, not to break the seal from the state of Mississippi. Yet Mamie kept insisting, and Rayner reluctantly relented.^97 The family also requested an autopsy, and Rayner agreed to see that the request was honored, providing that the condition of the body would allow it.^98 It is unknown if there was further talk about that once Rayner and his staff saw the remains, but the autopsy did not occur—nor would it until fifty years later. After the casket left the train station, Mamie, her father, Mooty, and Mob- ley followed Rayner to his mortuary.^99 Simeon Booker, correspondent for Ebony-Jet magazines, and David Jackson, photographer for the same publica- tions, were waiting outside. They had been there since midnight, not knowing when Till’s body was going to arrive. Finally, the hearse pulled up, followed by Mamie’s party. After Mamie got out of the car and walked into the building, Booker and Jackson followed behind.^100 Mamie waited with her family in a separate room while Rayner opened the casket. Now a witness to the body’s condition himself, he again tried to dissuade Mamie from viewing it. After this failed, Rayner acquiesced. Rayfield Mooty went in first, looked at the mangled corpse, and then went back for Mamie. With her father on one side and Gene Mobley on the other, she made her approach to the room containing her son. “The first thing that greeted us when we walked into the parlor was a terrible odor. I think I’ll carry that odor with me to my grave,” she said a few months later. As she neared the casket, she could see her son, naked, covered with lime. “What I saw looked like it came from out of space. It didn’t look like anything that we could dream, imagine in a funny book or any place else. It just didn’t look like it was for real.”^101 Standing over the casket, Mamie began to examine Emmett’s right side. She first noticed a large gash in his forehead, which she assumed had been made with an ax. The mouth was open and the tongue was protruding. “His lips were twisted and his teeth were bared just like a snarling dog’s,” she said. Then she saw the gunshot wound. “I wondered why they wasted a bullet because surely it wasn’t necessary.” Some features she recognized, such as the nose and forehead. One eye was missing, probably lost during the embalming process, but the other, despite being detached, was the right color. Still looking at the right side, “I found that part of the ear was gone, and the entire back of the head had been knocked out.” Mamie then asked Rayner to remove her son from the casket so that she could examine the left side also. He agreed, but asked her to go home first, send some clothes back, and then finish viewing the body once it was dressed. 102