Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) (29 page)

As it turns out, I was not always permitted to be in the courtroom, although even when I was outside, I was always somewhere nearby. Since I was there as a witness, there were some parts of the proceedings I could not be allowed to hear. But I would always be informed one way or the other; Rayfield and Daddy were constantly soaking up everything to tell me. The first day, I was kept in seclusion. That day wound up being consumed by jury selection. There were 120 white men selected for the jury pool and, my God, it seemed like the prosecutors and the defense attorneys were going to have to go through all of them just to find twelve who could sit and render a verdict without getting confused by other things. There were quite a few other things that could confuse a white man sitting in judgment of two other white men accused of killing a black boy in Mississippi. One of those things was whether these prospective jurors had contributed to the defense fund for Bryant and Milam. Local stores had put up jars to collect money. My goodness, it looked like they had pulled in more for their defense than we had collected in Chicago to get my son back, to bury him, to arrange for our trip, to seek justice. There was a report that as much as $10,000 was collected for the defense fund in the couple of weeks leading up to the trial. A number of potential jurors were excluded when they revealed that they had dropped a dollar or so in one of those jars. Others were eliminated when they said they had strong feelings about race. Still others were blocked from the jury when they admitted they had already made their minds up about the case. A few were connected in some way to the lawyers and they had to go.

It seemed like it would have been very hard down there not to have a connection to somebody connected to this case. In the tight white world of Tallahatchie County, social inbreeding was a way of life. There were only five lawyers practicing in Sumner at the time. All five had volunteered to serve on the defense team for Bryant and Milam. Two of the lawyers were partners, and were politically connected: J. J. Breland, who later would make no attempt at all to try to hide his hostility toward black people, and John Whitten, a cousin of Jamie Whitten, the segregationist congressman from the area. There were three lawyers for the prosecution. Gerald Chatham was the district attorney for a four-county area. He
was close to retirement, and this was going to be a taxing trial for that man, but he would hang in there. Robert Smith was more energetic. He was an ex-marine and FBI agent, who had been appointed by the governor as a special prosecutor. Finally, there was Hamilton Caldwell, the county prosecutor.

Even with this team of lawyers, we didn’t get a lot of preparation. The prosecutors didn’t seem to have much time for that kind of thing since they were so busy rolling up their sleeves and digging into the investigation. Sheriff Strider was no help at all. At least not to the prosecution. As a result, I don’t recall being asked too many questions about my background or Emmett’s character. I wasn’t coached on what to expect from the defense team or how to handle it. I knew why I was there. I was Emmett’s mother. No one could know a son like his mother. The identity of the body pulled from the Tallahatchie River was going to be crucial in this case. And I had to be firm, I had to be certain, I had to be convincing in my testimony that the body was that of my son. So that was pretty much it. And, of course, one other thing: I was cautioned always to put a handle on those responses from the witness stand. “Yes,
sir
.” “No,
sir
.” Oh, that was so important down there.

A quiet debate was still going on about just where this trial should be held. The question hadn’t been completely answered about exactly where Emmett’s murder took place. He was kidnapped in Leflore County and his body was found in Tallahatchie County, so the assumption was that he was killed in Tallahatchie. But there was a lot of talk—more like whispering, really—among black folks that Emmett could have been murdered in Sunflower County. From there, he could have been carried to the spot where he was found in the Tallahatchie River. If that could be established, then the whole trial would have to move, which would suit a lot of people just fine. Black people who knew these things knew that this case would have a much better chance of reaching a just result in front of a jury in Sunflower or even Leflore County than in Tallahatchie. The defense lawyers seemed to be aware of that, too, based on reports about their strategy. Leflore County was holding on to the kidnapping part of the case and would decide whether to indict after the murder trial. The defense lawyers wanted everything tried together in one big bundle. Apparently, the defense lawyers wanted it all handled right there in Tallahatchie County for the same reason many black folks wanted it anywhere but there. Tallahatchie had a reputation for being a mean place, very hostile toward blacks. And when I say “mean,” well, we’re talking mean by Delta standards, which was as bad as it gets.

Nowhere was the hostility more clear than with Sheriff H. C. Strider.
Oh, God, if that man had been an actor, he would have played the part of a racist Southern sheriff. He looked the part. He
lived
the part. Every day of his life, he lived it. He was malicious, he was hostile, he was in charge. Of everything, it seemed. Even the courthouse. That’s how it was in those Southern counties back then. And county sheriffs got to be well off because of their power. Strider owned a large plantation, which was the key to finding him if you bothered to look in the telephone book. Under
P
. David Halberstam learned that’s where you’d have to look for Strider. Under
P
for “plantation.” So he ran everything and he was determined to run a tight ship during this trial.

Monday, the first day, started off with a meeting run by Sheriff Strider. He was laying down the law. He told the press that there would be reserved seating for twenty-two white reporters up front, near the judge’s bench. He also had arranged for seating for the black press. Four seats, off to the side, behind the railing, next to a window. It didn’t matter to him whether or not the black reporters could hear anything that far away. It didn’t matter to him whether the black reporters even had access to his courtroom, when you got right down to it. One thing did matter to him, though. There hadn’t been any race mixing in his county up to that point and there wasn’t going to be any during that trial. To make matters worse, there was no “Colored” washroom, no “Colored” drinking fountain in the courthouse building. Black folks would have to go down the street to a black diner, where the black reporters would set up shop during the day. Bryant and Milam would use the washroom in the judge’s chambers. Strider made it clear he didn’t want the white and black reporters getting cozy, consulting, comparing notes. The
Ebony-Jet
team had brought along two photographers, David Jackson, who was black, and Mike Shea, who was white. It was a shrewd decision by publisher John H. Johnson to have someone who might get into places the black team members might not be able to go. Strider did at least allow the black reporters to take the back stairs to the courtroom along with the white reporters and jurors, according to Jimmy Hicks, the reporter from the
Baltimore Afro-American
. That way they could avoid the crush of spectators coming into the court on the main stairs up front. Strider handed out press passes. That would be a help. One of the things black reporters wanted to make sure they’d avoid was having any incidents while they were there. Even accidental contact with white folks: bumping into somebody on crowded stairs could have been a disaster. But accidentally bumping into each other was what some of the black reporters and the white reporters wound up working out, just so they could talk things through, sort them out every now and then. The
white reporters out of the North already were starting to challenge the rigid Southern way of life. But quietly.

The court was packed on that first day. There were reports that there were up to four hundred people in a courtroom with seats for less than half that many. Blacks could take a few seats in the rear, or stand in the rear or along the sides toward the rear. That crowd was unbelievable. It was intolerable. The heat was in the upper nineties, but someone said the temperature in that courtroom was at least 118 degrees. Judge Curtis Swango, who sipped Coca-Cola, told the men they could shed their jackets. That was some relief. Vendors squeezed by the people in the aisles to sell soda pop. To everybody, except black folks. People brought box lunches. Anybody who was not known to the deputies at the door had to be searched. Strider made a big deal out of the death threats he said he had received. Even so, there was a rumor that many whites carried weapons all the time, even into court.

Up front, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam sat with their wives and their sons. Two sons each, running around, playing constantly up front where the attorneys were questioning and challenging the potential jurors until they had run out of time for the day. The lawyers had only selected ten and would wait until the next morning to pick the last two. Court was adjourned. But, for Dr. Howard, Ruby Hurley, Medgar Evers, the black reporters, and the rest, the work was just about to get started.

Tuesday, September 20, was to be my first official appearance in the courtroom. Before nine in the morning, Rayfield, Daddy, and I made our way to the courthouse. Even in the morning, the weather was pretty much like the town itself: oppressive and unforgiving. The temperature was bad enough. But the humidity and the heat together made it so much worse. It felt like we had walked into hell.

There was no protection arranged for us. I kept looking around expecting to have somebody, federal marshals, the FBI, anybody. But we were on our own. The only thing that made me feel somewhat protected was the fact that there were so many reporters all over the place. I figured nothing could happen with all the reporters there to see it. People had so little experience with the media that they actually thought television cameras and radio microphones were broadcasting live. In fact, the media were flying their film back to New York every day to be processed.

As we made our way past all the people and the reporters to the courthouse, I couldn’t help but look up at the statue of a Confederate soldier that stood in the blazing heat outside the courthouse building. Straight up,
he stood, like the point on a sundial. Marking time, keeping watch. As we approached the building, gazing at the soldier, I heard the pop of an explosion. It startled me, made me jump. I looked up to see some white boys hanging out of the courthouse window with their fathers, laughing. One of the boys had aimed a cap pistol at me and fired. They all thought that was very funny. They
would
think that. These were the same people who would joke about how only a black boy would steal a gin fan and then try to carry it across a river. And then say straight-faced that they didn’t know what all the fuss was about. After all, that Tallahatchie River was full of niggers. That’s what they would say. There would be so many more heartless things they would say as they stood around out there or hung out of windows. The attitude of that place was simmering. Somewhere, not far from the court, it was reported, somebody had burned a cross. In the crazy carnival setting of Sumner, with children taking target practice out of a courthouse window, and soft drink vendors turning that Mississippi heat into profit, and cruel jokes passing around in the slow-marching shadow of a Confederate memorial, and news organizations rushing film each day to New York, somehow in the midst of all that, nobody even seemed to be distracted much at all by a burning cross.

Rod Serling, like so many other writers, would later draw inspiration from this event, this trial of the human experience, by crafting several television dramas. That seemed so fitting to me, because, looking back on it, that place
was
“the Twilight Zone.” I mean, I felt like I had been transported to some distant time and place, a very strange world. Planet Mississippi. Everything there seemed so different from the place I had left behind. There, everything was hostile and insecure and threatening.

There was all that and the absolute pressure of the moment for me.

Inside the courtroom, I was mobbed by the reporters, who wanted to record Mamie Bradley’s first appearance at the trial. The questions were routine and I was able to keep my answers brief. There had been a slight delay of the proceedings on this morning. Someone must have decided that four seats would not be enough for the black press and all the black witnesses and other special observers who would attend the trial. So there was a short recess to dig up a table for us. When I say “dig up,” that’s about what they seemed to do. I mean, that table was rough and unfinished and the splinters tore into my dress and scratched my arms. We also would wind up playing a strange game of musical chairs. Whenever we’d recess, some of the white folks would take some of our chairs and the black reporters would just take it in stride. They’d have to stand up nearby. But who was going to complain?

There was a bit of commotion shortly after I came in. It was Charles
Diggs, the congressman from Detroit. Congressman Diggs had written to Judge Swango asking if he could sit in on the trial as an observer. The judge had given his permission, but somebody forgot to tell Sheriff Strider and his crew. When Diggs and a couple of associates couldn’t get in the door, the reporter Jimmy Hicks got involved and offered to take the congressman’s card to the judge.

Hicks recalled a deputy taking the card and remarking to one of his cronies, “This nigger says that other nigger is a congressman.”

“A nigger congressman?” the second deputy exclaimed. “It ain’t possible. It ain’t even legal.”

Somehow, everything got worked out and the U.S. congressman, the highest-ranking public official to attend the murder trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, finally was given a seat. At the Jim Crow table.

It was so uncomfortable in that courtroom. The temperature was bad enough. But the heat from those people—not their body heat, but their emotional heat, their hatred—made it all so much worse. I could stand the heat, but the hatred was intolerable. I had brought a little silk fan with me, but it didn’t do much good. At one point, I raised my hand to order a soda pop from one of the white vendors. What was I thinking? All he served up was disgust.