Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) (27 page)

So Sheriff Strider was showing his true colors, much of the Southern press seemed to be putting its stamp of approval on it, and we refused to let them get away with it. When we got news of Strider’s remarks, Rayfield Mooty shot back right away that his comments smacked of a cover-up. It looked to us like Strider was trying to influence the grand jury, which still hadn’t convened to consider the murder indictment. Rayfield Mooty was good at this sort of thing. He was a union man, an organizer. He was a hard-hitting fighter who understood what it took to win. He was a shrewd negotiator who understood the timing of every aspect of bargaining with other tough people. He knew when to talk, when to walk. He knew when no was the best way to yes. He also knew all the people he needed to call on, in doing what he did so well. Not just the labor people, the civil rights people, and the politicians, but also the reporters, who were so important in getting the message out. Rayfield was just the person we needed to manage all the things we were taking on. I was glad when he worked out a leave of absence from his job. I was impressed when he was able to keep the leave open-ended so that he could be available to help us get through the difficult days ahead.

On Tuesday, September 6, the day we buried Emmett at Burr Oak Cemetery, the Tallahatchie grand jury sitting in Sumner, Mississippi, indicted Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam for Emmett’s murder. There had been a lot of back-and-forth discussion for a while. There was a question whether the trial should be held in Leflore County or Tallahatchie. Emmett was abducted from Papa Mose’s house in Money, which was in Leflore County, but his body was found in Tallahatchie County. That left the
question of where the murder had been committed. At some point, it was decided that Tallahatchie would have jurisdiction over the murder, and Leflore would have jurisdiction over the kidnapping. Since Bryant and Milam had already admitted to the kidnapping, that seemed like it would be an open-and-shut case. The murder trial was another matter altogether.

 M
ama didn’t want to hear it. She wouldn’t have it. But I had to do it. I had to go to Mississippi for the trial. I told reporters that I was ready to give my life to make sure that what had happened to Emmett would never happen to anyone else. I meant those words.

It was the possibility behind those words, wrapped up in that meaning, that upset Mama so. She saw the very real risk in all this, and she was terrified. She couldn’t bear the thought of it. The threats had been coming in and she knew about them. Even Mayor Daley had received threats because of his support for us. He placed a police guard at my home. But Henry Huff, the NAACP attorney, had encouraged us. A little. He told us he had gotten threats all the time and it never stopped him from going to Mississippi to do the important things he had to do. He would travel with us to Mississippi to advise us. Attorney Huff also had gone public with a statement that he was looking at the possibility of filing a civil action against Bryant and Milam. He wasn’t afraid. Still, Mama didn’t want me to take the chance. She didn’t want to lose her only daughter after all she was going through, all her suffering in the loss of her only grandson.

“I’ve lost one,” she said. “If I lose you, it would be the death of me.”

I had to stop and consider my mother’s feelings about the whole thing. I didn’t want her to be hurt. I didn’t even want to cause her discomfort. But this was something I simply had to do. Something deep inside was telling me that I had business in Mississippi. I felt that I had no choice but to go. And this is what I finally explained to my mother, what I finally got her to accept.

I could see the way things were going down in Mississippi and believed I could make a difference. Sheriff Strider already had shown his hand.
Emmett’s identity was going to be an issue. I knew my son. Who could have known him better? I was ready to testify that I knew my son, that I had recognized him, identified him. Maybe, even in Mississippi, there would be twelve people who would consider the testimony of a grieving mother on the stand.

Despite my determination, there was an indication that we were going to have a very difficult time trying to reason with anybody down there. There was a gloating editorial in a Jackson, Mississippi, paper after the murder indictment was handed down. Basically, the paper claimed that the state of Mississippi had gotten back at the NAACP by deciding to put Bryant and Milam on trial for murder. The point the paper was making was that the NAACP didn’t really want a trial at all. According to this paper, the organization was making Emmett’s death into a political issue. The worse the state of Mississippi looked, the better the NAACP would look. There were others—newspaper writers and politicians—who warned that “outside agitators” were threatening the outcome of the case. In other words, by talking about it, by condemning a system of racism that was supported by elected officials, by criticizing a law enforcement officer who was practically standing in the courthouse door blocking all fairness and integrity, by insisting that justice be done, we actually were risking that justice would be undone. How ridiculous. How telling.

First of all, the so-called outside agitators, like me, were only pushing for the conviction of two murderers, Bryant and Milam. If Mississippi citizens really were fair-minded, as the editorial writers argued, then they would have supported a just outcome in this case. They would have done that no matter how much outside agitation there might have been. There would be no way for a fair-minded jury to consider anything else, under any circumstances. After all, a fair-minded person is not going to be petty and make a decision just out of spite, just to make a point to outside agitators. If that was even a possibility, as some people in Mississippi were suggesting, then the people who would be sitting in judgment wouldn’t be fair-minded to begin with. And, if that was the case, then we had very good reason to be concerned, we had the right to speak out, and we had the duty to agitate. That was, after all, the American way.

Instead of serving the ends of justice, it was beginning to seem like the trial was serving the ends of ego. It wasn’t the state of Mississippi versus Bryant and Milam. It was the state of Mississippi against just about everybody, to prove a point: that all the state’s critics were wrong. It made me think that there was some other purpose here. The murder case had two defendants, and a whole state on the defensive. So, it was beginning to seem like a decision had been made that there would be a fair, impartial
trial. And then Bryant and Milam would be acquitted. I was getting the sickening feeling that I just might see these murderers go free.

As it turns out, Henry Huff would not make the trip to Mississippi after all. He developed a problem with his foot and couldn’t travel. Daddy and Rayfield would travel with me. I would have to rely on the Mississippi state prosecutors for any legal advice I might need while there. The money we got from the donations at the funeral, all the public events, and from the unions would cover our expenses. Rayfield worked out all the arrangements. We were ready to go. I don’t know that we were ready for what we would encounter. But I was as firm, as decisive as I had ever been. I was channeling my anger now in the direction where it should have been going. I wanted to rip the sheets off the state of Mississippi, shine the light on the night riders, who seemed to be in charge. They had brought the worst of Mississippi racism right to our Chicago doorstep and I was going to take a little Chicago right back down to them. “Someone is going to pay for this,” I declared. “The entire state of Mississippi is going to pay.”

Once we made the decision to go to Mississippi for the trial, there was still another very important thing we had to figure out. Where would we stay? Even under normal circumstances, we really would have had to think about something like that. We would have had to think about it long and hard. There was no hotel or rooming house that we knew about that would accommodate blacks in Sumner, where the trial would take place. If we stayed with other black families in town, well, that could put those families in danger. It was that bad down there, and we surely didn’t want to cause problems for anybody. Of course, we also had to think about our own safety, and that was no small thing, either. Somewhere in all the discussions, somebody was able to work things out with Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a contact of the NAACP, and also William Dawson, the powerful congressman from Chicago. Dr. Howard was the man who had made the statement to the press at Midway Airport in Chicago on the day they found Emmett’s body that “There will be hell to pay in Mississippi.”

Dr. Howard was a very successful surgeon, and he was a major force in the push for civil rights in Mississippi. He had a huge estate in Mound Bayou, an all-black town that had been founded by an ex-slave. It was roughly an hour’s drive from Sumner. Dr. Howard would keep us safe there at his place. As it turns out, all black folks attending the trial from outside Mississippi would stay in Mound Bayou, a number of them at Dr. Howard’s place. Now, to work out how to make it into Mound Bayou. Getting us there was almost like traveling the underground railroad in reverse, with “conductors” and safe houses along the way. There was a
whole lot of anxiety about black folks traveling the roads of Mississippi about that time. There was some talk about how state troopers would target black folks who were involved in civil rights organizing. The word was that some officials would pass along license plate numbers to Ku Klux Klan members, who would lay in wait on dark, lonely roads. In Mississippi in the fifties, “driving while black” could be a capital offense.

Our plan involved several steps and, of course, quite a few people to make sure there were no missteps. We knew we could expect a hostile reception by Mississippi white folks. I mean, that whole state was on edge. So everything had to work smoothly. Rayfield, Daddy, and I flew into Memphis on Friday, September 16. When we got off the plane, there was a delegation to receive us, and all I know is that they took us to the home of a prominent black dentist. I say home, but it really looked more like a mansion to me, and there was a huge feast prepared in our honor. I was so amazed that black people were living like this in the South. All the places I’d ever seen were, well, they were a lot more modest. In fact, some had been pretty basic. Shotgun houses where you could look through the cracks in the floorboards and see the chickens underneath, scratching and whatnot.

The next morning, Saturday, September 17, we were driven to Clarksdale, Mississippi. The Clarksdale connection had been set up by Bishop Ford. We were taken to the home of his brother. It was Bishop Ford’s brother who saw us safely to Dr. Howard’s house in Mound Bayou. Dr. Howard would look after us from that point until the trial was over.

We learned very quickly that Dr. Howard was as friendly and generous as he was well off. And he was very well off. His huge home rested comfortably on nearly two hundred acres, sort of a farm, sort of a ranch. He also had set up a zoo in Mound Bayou. He felt that black children ought to at least know what it was like to see exotic animals. And where else were they going to be able to do that? He kept monkeys and alligators and peacocks and all sorts of exotic fish. There was a public swimming pool he had built for local residents. And he believed in creating greater opportunities for people who worked for him. He had come to Mound Bayou as chief surgeon at the Taborian Hospital. Later he formed his own Friendship Clinic. He would provide training and tutoring for nurse’s aides, take them up to Memphis, have them tested and certified to become nurses so they could take advantage of the greater job opportunities they might find in the big city. It was fascinating to learn about Dr. Howard, a man who could have rested comfortably with his fortune and never worried about a thing. But he didn’t seem comfortable at all resting with his own while
there was so much deprivation around him. He didn’t seem like a man who could just sit back and refuse to get involved. He was committed to making things better.

Dr. Howard’s civil rights work had been covered in the
Tri-State Defender
, which had called him “a modern Moses.” And, years later, his impressive life’s work and contributions would be documented by scholars David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito. As they would tell it, Dr. Howard was an important man. As a black organizer in Mississippi, he had formed the Mississippi Regional Council for Negro Leadership, which sponsored huge rallies in Mound Bayou each year that would attract up to ten thousand people. There would be parades and entertainment and, most important of all, there would be leadership development with speeches by national political figures like Congressman William Dawson of Chicago, Congressman Charles Diggs of Detroit, and NAACP Counsel Thurgood Marshall. His organization rivaled the NAACP in Mississippi. So, according to the Beitos, in 1954, when the Supreme Court announced in
Brown
v.
Board of Education
that school segregation was unconstitutional, Dr. Howard was summoned by Mississippi Governor Hugh White to discuss a way that Mississippi could keep its schools segregated, but give equal funding to black schools.

Dr. Howard said no thanks. Or words to that effect. “We are demanding a chance to help shape our own destiny,” he declared to shocked white politicians.

For his efforts, his hard work for black equality in Mississippi, Dr. Howard was put on a hit list, along with a number of other black activists.

In the days we would stay with Dr. Howard, there was so much activity at his home, which became sort of a black command center during the trial. There were strategy sessions each night. And there were so many impressive people there during those days. Medgar Evers was the NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, based in Jackson. He had once worked for Dr. Howard, selling burial insurance to blacks. He was so impressive. He had been in the army, and he was a very strong and decisive young man, who seemed so comfortable taking charge. He had a great passion for what he was doing and a deep understanding of just how all the pieces came together. How the grassroots work being done there in Mississippi fit into the larger picture, the national struggle for civil rights. Medgar Evers could have been content to make a living for his young family instead of driving every day between Jackson and the Delta, risking his life. I was grateful for his commitment and his compassion. He had been really moved by Emmett’s murder. He was the one who had done the initial investigation
to brief the NAACP head office. Investigating racist crimes was just one of the many things he did back then. But you could see in his eyes that this one was personal to him.