The selling of Emmett Till

EDITOR’S NOTE: produced by the Delta Project, an in-depth report from the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. This is the first of a series of articles to be run in The Daily Mississippian.

SUMNER -- They passed the pen among themselves. Black hand to white hand, white hand to black hand. And one by one, all 14 wrote their names on an antique brown sheet of paper.

And as they signed, they cried.

They cried because this was much more than a sheet of paper. It was the product of meeting upon meeting of argument and discussion; it was justice for the family of the murdered Emmett Till; it was blacks and whites coming together in a place long haunted by ghosts of race wars past.

Finally, the dream of salvation was beginning to take shape in little Sumner.

On Oct. 2, 2007, the national news media showed up outside Sumner’s courthouse along with more than 400 people to watch the Emmett Till Memorial Commission apologize for a miscarriage of justice that took place there in 1955. In September that year, an all-white jury quickly acquitted two white men who would later admit to murdering Till, a 14-year-old black kid from Chicago who was said to have whistled at a white woman.

Now, the commission is making steady progress on its next challenge: restoring the courthouse to its 1955 design. Plans call for a state-of-the-art Till museum, welcome center and multipurpose building, a combination some folks hope will lure tourists, save the crumbling courthouse and resurrect the shrinking town.

At an April 5th meeting, 17 of the 19 members of the commission met in the Emmett Till Multi-Purpose Center to hear reports. Chicago was sending 12 high school students to spend the night in the courthouse. Selma, Ala., had invited the commission to visit its civil rights museum. The commission had found possible help from nearby Mississippi Valley State University to record and preserve oral histories for the museum.

As Jerome Little, president of the Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors, brought up the oral histories, Johnny B. Thomas, the mayor of Glendora, spoke up.

Thomas’ little poverty-stricken town, just down the road, has its own Till museum, albeit much more humble than the one planned for Sumner. Glendora had already acquired a grant on its own to gather artifacts and interviews related to the Till case, Thomas said. And officials planned to move forward with it.

There was tension in the air when John Wilchie leaned back in his chair and said to Thomas over his shoulder: “So, what you’re saying is you’re one step ahead of us.”

Thomas softened and slowed his voice in reply. “Not a step ahead, a step with you.”

It was a calm reply in what could have been a contentious situation. The members of the commission come from different backgrounds and different tiny towns. And although their mission is clear -- to honor Till and help the town through rebuilding the courthouse and attracting tourists -- some members inevitably come to meetings with their own agendas. Thomas, determined to do whatever he can for his beleaguered town, was one of them, said some commission members.

This time, the tension was dissolved easily, but such hasn’t always been the case.

Before the commission could even sign the letter of regret, it had lost five of its original 19 members. Some had left disappointed when the commission didn’t seem to be meeting their expectations.

The blacks on the commission and in the community called for justice, while the whites wanted to restore the courthouse. Some just wanted to bring jobs to the county, while some believed jobs and money should have nothing to do with Till’s legacy.

One day in 2006, the Sumner courthouse filled with angry whites and blacks, said Little, who, along with fellow Supervisor Bobby Banks, started the Till commission.

Each group felt the other would somehow take over, he said. The blacks felt Till’s name would be exploited and taken over by the whites, and the whites felt the commission’s efforts would turn into “something like Jesse Jackson” and be taken over by people from all over the country, Little said.

Little was determined not to let that happen, he said. But some people had a difficult time believing.

“They had so little faith in me and Mr. Banks,” Little said.

Little and the commission found middle ground by envisioning a restored courthouse, complete with a Till museum and Sumner welcome center, all honoring the Till legacy and offering jobs and opportunities to Tallahatchie County.

The key to satisfying most people was the courthouse. A restored courthouse with a Till museum would ensure that county jobs stayed in Sumner. Tallahatchie has two county seats and two courthouses, and there is occasionally talk of consolidation. Sumner is the smaller of the two by far. If the courthouse were to disappear in the name of cost cutting, some in Sumner feel the town might disappear as well.

“The hope is to revitalize Sumner and Tallahatchie County through this tourism piece,” said Little, mindful that civil rights museums in places such as Memphis, Montgomery and Birmingham draw thousands of tourists every year.

People have sometimes doubted the Till commission’s goals, though.

During a 2006 meeting, plans for a group of students from Atlanta to visit Sumner were being discussed. A commission member mentioned that since Jesse Jackson was in the Atlanta area, he might take an interest in the commission and come down as well.

A white member of the commission became very upset, waving her hands and raising her voice at the thought of Jackson visiting, Little said. She almost left the commission at that moment, but members persuaded her to stay.

Others have been even more public about their disapproval.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2007 that retired preacher G.A. Johnson likened the commission’s efforts to a greedy plan to capitalize on an innocent boy’s name.

“They slaughtered this boy and now they want to come back and raise money off the death of that child -- God forbid,” Johnson said.

Even those hired by the commission held serious doubts at first.

The group hired Belinda Stewart architects to work on plans to restore the courthouse, and Brenda Blakely was sent to Sumner as a professional grant writer to help raise money for the construction.

At first, Blakely was a reluctant participant.

“I didn’t like the particular approach they were taking with Emmett,” she said.

The project seemed more of a scheme to use Till’s name to get money, she said. So for the first six months she was assigned to the project, she did little. But over time, she realized the commission was slowly uniting the town and healing old wounds, she said.

“The process of them reconciling has been as important as the project itself,” Blakely said.

Blakely spoke of Little’s determined diplomacy, making sure to address disagreements and keep people working together.

“I have seen Jerome personally go and apologize to people after meetings,” she said. “In one week, he apologized 12 or 15 times.”

It was only early this year that she really began to realize the commission was achieving reconciliation, Blakely said.

In a place with such history, it seems such goals always come slowly. The letter of regret came about after a year and a half of discussion and revision.

Susan Glisson of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at Ole Miss was called in to help draft the letter. Glisson had worked with a group in Philadelphia, Miss., on a similar letter of apology for that town’s role in the death of three civil rights workers in the early 1960s.

The Philadelphia effort helped bring black and white communities closer together. They even helped persuade state officials to reopen the murder investigation and, eventually, convict the man who ordered the murders. But the letter Glisson submitted as an example for the Till commission had one major problem: the word “apology.”

In Sumner, the word was trouble, for “apology” implies guilt, and many in Sumner feel they had nothing to do with Till’s murder.

The commission went back and forth on whether to use the word. Finally, Frank Mitchener, a former president of the National Cotton Council, suggested the word “regret” as a substitute.

The commission sent a group to Chicago to discuss the letter with Till’s remaining family. After some hesitance, the family agreed to the wording.

Even today, the Till trial remains a sore spot for many in Sumner. And some feel the commission’s efforts do nothing to help.

“I see it as more divisive than anything,” said John Whitten III, the county prosecuting attorney. His late father, John Whitten Jr., was one of the Sumner lawyers who defended the two killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant.

The trial fell into Sumner’s lap by happenstance. The kidnapping and murder occurred in Leflore and Sunflower counties. Till’s body, however, was found in the Tallahatchie River within Tallahatchie County’s borders.

Tallahatchie County never should have had to deal with the Till trial, so an apology for something that never should have happened in the first place is unwarranted, Whitten said.

Others simply believe the present-day town should not be held accountable for tragedies of the past.

“I’m not sure if the community owns a decision of 12 (jurors),” said the Rev. William Milam, pastor of Sumner’s First Baptist Church.

Milam moved to Sumner a few years ago after being away from the Delta since 1984. When he first came to Sumner, he said, his aunt took him aside and told him there was something he needed to know.

Milam was distantly related to one of the murderers, J.W. Milam. Discovering the family ties didn’t change his opinion of what happened.

It was a terrible miscarriage of justice, he said. The jurors who acquitted Milam and Bryant are absolutely responsible for their decision. Shame on them, but even more shame on the murderers, he said firmly.

He is still doubtful how much responsibility the Sumner of 2010 should take for the Sumner of 1955, though.

Meanwhile, the courthouse has been approved as a site with national significance on the National Historic Registry. Now Blakely is working to have it designated a national landmark.

Although the courthouse was remodeled in 1972, many of the original materials, such as the wood and windows, are still available. But to return it to its exact 1955 likeness, several million dollars will be needed. With the renovation of Wong’s Market and Grocery across the street for the welcome center and improvements planned for the Emmett Till Multi-Purpose Center on Highway 49, the project totals $12 million.

It has won five grants, both state and federal, for the restoration of the courthouse foundation and the original windows, Blakely said.

That leaves $9 million to go. But things are picking up and people are beginning to catch on, she said.

The Mississippi Development Authority has shown interest in developing a civil rights trail for tourists, which would include Sumner’s courthouse. And the Smithsonian has shown interest in helping guide efforts to develop an interpretive Till museum. Little even talks of exploring whether the Smithsonian might share Till’s casket.

But with the economy still in a slump, money from the federal, state and local governments is hard to come by.

For now, Mayor Smith Murphey is content to watch the commission from afar. The town recently slashed its budget by 40 percent and is in no position to help. He sees no particular harm in the Till commission, though.

“As long as the town doesn’t have to come up with the money to make it go,” he said.

Murphey admits that the courthouse attracts visitors, but with no stores, restaurants or lodging, tourists do not necessarily mean money. There’s not a motel or, for that matter, a traffic light in all of Tallahatchie County.

Once thriving with a movie theater and honky-tonks, several grocery stores, drugstores, two doctors’ offices, an active railroad and a three-story inn, Sumner no longer has even a place to sit and order lunch. The stores on the courthouse square are all but gone, except for a Regions bank banch and a few law offices and drugstores.

It is hard to imagine busloads of tourists in the tiny town square. 

“We’re happy to have (the tourists),” he said. “As far as that bringing money into town, it’s not likely.”

Little insists, with an almost religious fervor, that it is only a matter of time before the restoration of the courthouse and Till’s legacy bring redemption to Sumner. As evidence, he points to small victories such as the establishment of Tallahatchie County’s first department of tourism and recreation, which provides seven jobs.

He also points to himself. Little grew up on Mitchener’s plantation just outside of Sumner. He ran for the county board of supervisors seven times before winning in 1993, becoming, along with Banks, one of the first two African-Americans on the board.

Upon his victory, he called Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett’s mother, in Chicago to tell her what was happening in Tallahatchie.

“I wanted to let her know we had made it,” Little recounted, tears welling up in his eyes.

Sumner was changing, he assured her; it was not the same place it had been in 1955 when Emmett Till came down to visit his uncle and returned to Chicago in a coffin.

Till’s mother said she now knew her son had not died in vain.