White supremacy and segregation are fundamental to the way of life in Mississippi. Yet, as Robert B. Smith, the special prosecutor in the Emmett Louis Till murder case told the jury in his summation:
“We can only keep our way of life when we support the constitutional guarantee of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for every citizen, regardless of race, and Emmett Till was entitled to his life.”
Emmett Till, a Chicago Negro, was 14 years old when he was kidnapped from his great-uncle’s shack in Money, Miss. He was savagely beaten before his weighted body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River.
The crime, committed in the name of white supremacy, shocked and nauseated the nation. Men of goodwill, in the South as well as in the North, hoped that for once true justice would prevail in the case of a Negro murdered by white men.
But the events leading up to the trial and acquittal of young Till’s accused killers, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, do not generate confidence in law enforcement and justice in Mississippi.
The evil forces of race prejudice were present throughout every aspect of the case, from the moment that Emmett Till was taken from Moses Wright’s shack to the defense summation that was a raw appeal to the bigotry of the jurors.
Because the murdered boy was a Negro, police work was indifferent and inadequate, almost to the point of being nonexistent. In fact, it was the county sheriff who first raised doubt about the identification of the body found in the Tallahatchie River as being Emmett Till’s.
The doubt thus raised, and fully exploited by the defense, made it easier for the jurors to rationalize their acquittal of Bryant and Milam. They completely disregarded Mrs. Mamie Bradley’s positive identification of the body even though as Special Prosecutor Smith said, “The last thing in God’s creation a mother wants is to believe her son is dead.”
In many respects, the case against Bryant and Milam was circumstantial. That is to say that no witness could be found, who would testify to having seen young Till actually murdered.
Ray Brennan, the Sun-Times staffer who covered the trial and who is a veteran courtroom reporter, feels that the prosecution did the best it could with the material available. But the material was thin because the police authorities who were in charge of investigating the case had no stomach for doing an effective job.
No written statements ever were taken from either Brian or Milam. There was no search for bloodstains or other telltale clues at the murder scene or in the truck in which the two men transported young Till from his great-uncle’s home.
The lack of effective police work virtually amounts to a conspiracy to cover up a murder that was nothing less than a lynching. It is a blot not only on Mississippi, but on America as a whole.
The State of Mississippi has one more chance to show that to a limited degree, at least, it can mete out justice for Negros as well as whites. Kidnapping charges are still pending against Bryant and Milam. If they are tried, convicted and jailed, America’s conscience will be a little clearer. But calling murder kidnapping does not make it so. People of goodwill everywhere know that the truth about the people of goodwill everywhere know the truth about the Till case, and they are heartsick at the outcome.
