Chapter 4: Growing up

Chapter 4

Growing up

 

 My family moved from all white Forest Park, to all white Westchester Illinois which was another town that made up Proviso Township. My parents weren’t deliberately looking for a white neighborhood. They simply wanted a nice house with a good school.  They weren’t concerned with the color of their neighbors skin. There I attended Junior High School, and found the very same attitudes.  During the seventh grade, I had a Social Studies teacher that seemed to spend an entire month on the virtues of the  country of South Africa. I learned about the “heroic” Afrikaners that kept the black majority under their racist rule. That very same teacher staged a ridiculous production of “Little Black Sambo” for the PTA. One of my best friends had the starring role, black-face and all. He was carefully coached to speak his lines in an over-the-top exaggerated “black” dialect.  It was hideous.  All the kids in my graduating class would be attending West High which was all white. Not because it was officially segregated,  but simply because blacks didn’t live in the villages that were in that district. It was actually economic segregation.  During my last year of Junior High, my parents were looking to move once again, and I begged them to find a house that was within East High district. All my family had attended that school. All my Aunts, Uncles, both parents and my brother went there. I wanted the same experience. East High was also already integrated with kids coming from Maywood where the school was located. Most of my friends were bigots as were their parents. None of them could understand why I’d want to go to school with the “N”’s. They never imagined I wouldn’t want to go to school with them. 

 I entered High School in 1962. We had an enrollment of around 4,000 and about 35% were African-American. There were never any incidents at the school involving race relations. Not then at least. That would come later. There was one incident that caught my attention. It was the Senior Prom. The star athlete was a handsome black guy. He was taking a pretty white girl to the prom. The Administration wouldn’t allow it. So, my brother and his girlfriend, double dated with them. They skipped the Prom, and they went to Second City in Chicago and caught a show and then a dinner at a nice restaurant. I thought that was pretty cool of my brother.  I looked up to him a lot. He always set a good example for me to follow.  

The Civil Rights movement was beginning to take hold and I was immersing myself in folk music and blues music as opposed the pop of the time (although I was taken completely by the Beatles).  In 1964 word came that three Civil Rights Workers were murdered in Neshoba County Mississippi just outside of the town of Philidelphia. (Hardly the “City of Brotherly Love” that we know about).  

The following provides historical context for the first installment that appeared in the print edition of the Neshoba Democrat on April 28, 2004.— Jim Prince

 

“On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County. The trio had come here to investigate the burning of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church in the Longdale community off of Mississippi 16 east. 

 The night the church was burned three parishioners were beaten, some severely. The murders of Michael Schwerner, 24, James Chaney, 21, and Andrew Goodman, 20, were part of a plot hatched by the Lauderdale County unit of the Ku Klux Klan and carried out by members of the Neshoba County unit. 

The civil rights workers were part of a broader national movement that hoped to begin a voter

registration drive in this area, part of the Mississippi Summer Project, what became known as Freedom Summer. 

A coalition of civil rights organizations known as COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) conceived of a project in the state with massive numbers of student volunteers who would converge on the state to register black voters and to conduct “freedom schools” which would offer curriculum of black history and arts to children throughout the state. 

Chaney, a plasterer, had grown up in Meridian, in nearby Lauderdale County, and even as a young student had been interested in civil rights work. Schwerner, a Jewish New Yorker, came south to Meridian to set up the COFO office because he believed he could help prevent the spread of hate that had resulted in the Holocaust, an event that had taken the lives of some of his family. (this obviously struck a nerve with me) 

 Chaney volunteered at the Meridian office, and the two young men began to make visits to Neshoba County to find residents there to sponsor voter registration drives and freedom schools. They made contact with members of Mt. Zion Methodist Church and Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, as well as other individuals. They made plans for a COFO project in the area. 

Tensions were mounting that summer as some of Mississippi’s segregationist newspapers propagated the idea of a “pending invasion” of civil rights workers. The state was a powder keg, as the Ku Klux Klan increasingly made its presence known and fears were heightened among both blacks and whites. In April 1964 the Klan burned about a dozen crosses in Neshoba County. The Neshoba Democrat spoke against the cross burnings and the coercion and intimidation employed by the Klan. 

The Ku Klux Klan and other groups had become more active in response to increasing civil rights activity, especially since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. In addition to the Klan’s resistance, the state of Mississippi was continuing to monitor activists through the Sovereignty Commission, which worked in conjunction with the White Citizens Council, to use economic intimidation and threats to attempt to keep blacks in subservient positions.  

Undertaking such struggles for equality, exemplified by the trio was dangerous and courageous work.

In mid-June, Chaney and Schwerner traveled to Oxford, Ohio, to participate in the Freedom Summer volunteers training session being held there. While they were away, on June 16, Klansman assaulted members of the Mt. Zion church, looking for Chaney and Schwerner. Later in the evening, they burned the church to the ground. Having been alerted of the attack, Chaney and Schwerner, joined by new volunteer Goodman immediately drove south to investigate and offer solace to the church members. 

On Sunday afternoon, June 21, Father’s Day, the three young men drove to Philadelphia from Meridian and visited members of Mt. Zion. On the way back through town they were pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. Chaney was charged with speeding and Schwerner and Goodman were held on suspicion of burning the Mt. Zion church.” 

The details of the murders came later. The group took the activists to a remote area and beat them until they died. Special treatment, however, was reserved for James Chaney, the one black in the group. The Klansmen, in addition to beating Chaney, also used a small handgun to shoot him through his penis and anus, ostensibly because he “knew better” than to be consorting with outside agitators looking to change the status quo in Mississippi. After several weeks of searching, and after recovering more than a dozen bodies not belonging to the missing civil rights workers, the authorities finally found them buried under an earthen dam. Several Klansmen, including Price, were arrested and tried for the brutal killings. The jury, made up of their cousins, friends, and sympathizers, found them all NOT GUILTY. Some time later, the federal government charged the murderers with violating the civil rights of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. This time the Klansmen were convicted and served sentences ranging from two to ten years. And that…was called justice.
 

News of this nature was beginning to have its effect on the black students at my school and I felt

ashamed and helpless to stop the mistrust that had to be taking place. Still during my time there, our affections for each other were quite open. We were all friends in school and competed on sports teams together, even though we tended to go our separate ways outside of the school environment. By my senior year, two African-American girls were elected to the Home Coming Queens court. One of the girls was in several of my classes. She was a friend and much loved by everyone at school. She’d laugh at your stupid jokes and listen to your boring stories. She was a classical violinist and her father was a doctor. I voted for her, as did most of the kids in school, but she somehow wasn’t selected as Queen. She went on to study music at the University of Illinois, and later married a man named Robert Johnson. Together they founded BET and she became the first African-American female billionaire. Her name is Sheila Crump Johnson. 

I graduated Proviso East High School in 1966 and the next year something happened that was bound to happen sooner or later. Proviso East was pretty famous for an illustrious alumni that included, NBA Basketball stars Jim Brewer, Doc Rivers (coach of the Boston Celtics) All Star Michael Finley, NFL Hall of Famer Ray Nitschke, actor Dennis Franz, business woman Sheila Crump Johnson, Grammy winning folk singer John Prine,  and US astronaut Eugene Cernan…the last human to walk on the moon. 

Proviso East was caught up in a great deal of the racial turmoil that was prevalent in the country in the late 1960s. The 1967-68 school year saw local tensions become violent. 

In September 1967, a large fight, started in the school cafeteria when five aucasian girls were selected by school officials as finalists for the school’s Homecoming Queen, escalated as students were dismissed. Property damage, some caused by the use of gasoline bombs, and fighting caused more than 100 state troopers to be called in, and a strict curfew to be enforced. Principal Hubert Pitt announced that he would appoint a racially balanced group of students to select a new slate of candidates. Apparently after selecting two African-American girls just the year before, the school administration had decided not to let something like that happen again. God forbid one of them be elected Queen.  

One of my classmates was Fred Hampton. He graduated with me in 1966. Although black and white students at Proviso East rarely mixed socially outside of classes, because of his popularity among both groups, Fred was selected to be head of the Inter-racial Council, which met whenever there was racial friction. Fred could always calm the situation.  The year after we graduated, the principal called Fred back to ease the growing racial tensions.  

Fred promoted Black Power. The response of the media and most whites to the term Black Power was swift, negative, and over the top hysterical. Many saw Black Power as an attack on all white people.

Blacks saw it differently. It was about a positive message to them (the black community), to bring blacks together and build their confidence.  Fred said that “blackness was what was in your  heart, not the color of your skin”. But any symbol of black unity, including the modest Afro that Fred wore, threatened many whites.  By 1967, Fred was put on the FBI’s Key Agitator Index;  a list of activists that FBI director J. Edgar  Hoover ordered FBI agents to monitor closely.  Fred became a leader of the Black Panther movement in Chicago. He was killed in a police raid on Panther headquarters in October of 1969. Like Emmett Till before him, his body was viewed at the Raynor Funeral Home in Chicago.

 

Chapter 3: Emmett Till

Chapter 3

 

Emmett Till

 

      I read a story in the Chicago Tribune about a local boy named Emmett Till. He was a Negro (as African-Americans were called then). What happened to him hit me between the eyes like a hammer. I was 7 years old at the time. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955 when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store.  Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him, and shot him in the head.  The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them. Till's murder and open casket funeral galvanized the emerging civil rights movement. 

In August 1955; Till's great uncle Moses Wright came up from Mississippi to visit the family in Chicago. At the end of his stay, Wright was planning to take Till's cousin, Wheeler Parker, back to Mississippi with him to visit relatives down South, and when Till learned of these plans he begged his mother to let him go along. Initially, Till's mother said no. She wanted to take a road trip to Omaha, Nebraska and attempted to lure Till to join her with the promise of open-road driving lessons. But Till desperately wanted to spend time with his cousins in Mississippi, and in a fateful decision that would have grave impact on their lives and the course of American history, Till's mother relented and let him go. 

 

On August 19, 1955—the day before Till left with his uncle and cousin for Mississippi—Mamie Till gave her son his late father's signet ring, engraved with the initials L.T. The next day she drove her son to the 63rd Street station in Chicago. They kissed goodbye, and Till boarded a southbound train headed for Mississippi. It was the last time they ever saw each other. 

Three days after arriving in Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, Emmett Till and a group of

teenagers entered Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market to buy refreshments after a long day picking cotton in the hot afternoon sun. What exactly transpired inside the grocery store that afternoon will never be known. Till purchased bubble gum, and some of the kids with him would later report that he either whistled at, flirted with, or touched the hand of the store's white female clerk—and wife of the owner—Carolyn Bryant. 

Four days later, at approximately 2:30 in the morning on August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant, Carolyn's

husband, and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Till from Moses Wright's home. They then beat the teenager brutally, dragged him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and shoved his mutilated body into the water. Moses Wright reported Till's disappearance to the local authorities, and three days later his corpse was pulled out of the river.  

 

Till's face was mutilated beyond recognition, and Wright only managed to positively identify him by the ring on his finger, engraved with his father's initials, L.T. Till's body was shipped to Chicago, where his mother opted to have an open-casket funeral with Till's body on display for five days. Thousands of people came to the Roberts Temple Church of God to see the evidence of this brutal hate crime. Till's mother said that, despite the enormous pain it caused her to see her son's dead body on display, she opted for an open-casket funeral to "let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like." 

In the weeks that passed between Till's burial and the murder and kidnapping trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, two black publications, Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender, published graphic images of Till's corpse.  By the time the trial commenced on September 19, Emmett Till's murder had become a source of outrage and indignation throughout much of the country. Because blacks and women were barred from serving jury duty, Bryant and Milam were tried before an all-white, all-male jury. In an act of extraordinary bravery, Moses Wright took the stand and identified Bryant and Milam as Till's kidnappers and killers. At the time, it was almost unheard of for blacks to openly accuse whites in court, and by doing so Wright put his own life in grave danger.  

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the defendants' guilt and widespread pleas for justice from outside Mississippi, on September 23 the panel of white male jurors acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges. Their deliberations lasted a mere 67 minutes. Only a few months later, in January 1956, Bryant and Milam admitted to committing the crime. Protected by double jeopardy laws, they told the whole story of how they kidnapped and killed Emmett Till to Look magazine for $4,000. 

 

Coming only one year after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education mandated the end of racial segregation in public schools, Till's death provided an important catalyst for the American Civil Rights Movement. One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, sparking the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott. Nine years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing many forms of racial discrimination and segregation, one year later it passed the Voting Rights Act outlawing discriminatory voting practices. 

Although she never stopped feeling the pain from her son's death, Mamie Till (who died of heart failure in 2003) also recognized that what happened to Emmett Till helped open Americans' eyes to the racial hatred plaguing their country, and in doing so helped spark a massive protest movement for racial equality and justice. Before Till's murder, she said, "people really didn't know that things this horrible could take place. And the fact that it happened to a child, that make all the difference in the world." 

This is the story as written by William Bradford Huie. It appeared in Look Magazine titled 

“The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi.” 

Editors Note: In the long history of man's inhumanity to man, racial conflict has produced some of the most horrible examples of brutality. The recent slaying of Emmett Till in Mississippi is a case in point.

 

The editors of Look are convinced that they are presenting here, for the first time, the real story of that killing -- the story no jury heard and no newspaper reader saw. 

Disclosed here is the true account of the slaying in Mississippi of a Negro youth named Emmett Till.

 

Last September in Sumner, Miss., a petit jury found the youth's admitted abductors not guilty of murder. In November, in Greenwood, a grand jury declined to indict them for kidnapping.

Of the murder trial, the Memphis Commercial Appeal said: "Evidence necessary for convicting on a murder charge was lacking." But with truth absent, hypocrisy and myth have flourished. Now, hypocrisy can be exposed; myth dispelled. Here are the facts.

 

Carolyn Holloway Bryant is 21, five feet tall, weighs 103 pounds. An Irish girl, with black hair and black eyes, she is a small farmer's daughter who, at 17, quit high school at Indianola, Miss., to marry a soldier, Roy Bryant, then 20, now 24. The couple have two boys, three and two; and they operate a store at a dusty crossroads called Money: post office, filling station and three stores clustered around a school and a gin, and set in the vast, lonely cotton patch that is the Mississippi Delta. 

Carolyn and Roy Bryant are poor: no car, no TV. They live in the back of the store which Roy's brothers helped set up when he got out of the 82nd Airborne in 1953. They sell "snuff-and-fatback" to Negro field hands on credit: and they earn little because, for one reason, the government has been giving the Negroes food they formerly bought. 

Carolyn and Roy Bryant's social life is visits to their families, to the Baptist church, and, whenever they can borrow a car, to a drive-in, with the kids sleeping in the back seat. They call Shane the best picture they ever saw.  

For extra money, Carolyn tends store when Roy works outside -- like truck driving for a brother. And he has many brothers. His mother had two husbands, 11 children. The first five -- all boys -- were "Milam children"; the next six -- three boys, three girls -- were "Bryant children." 

This is a lusty and devoted clan. They work, fight, vote and play as a family. The "half" in their fraternity is forgotten. For years, they have operated a chain of cottonfield stores, as well as trucks and mechanical cotton pickers. In relation to the Negroes, they are somewhat like white traders in portions of Africa today; and they are determined to resist the revolt of colored men against white rule. 

On Wednesday evening, August 24, 1955, Roy was in Texas, on a brother's truck. He had carted shrimp from New Orleans to San Antonio, proceeded to Brownsville. Carolyn was alone in the store. But back in the living quarters was her sister-in-law Juanita Milam, 27, with her two small sons and Carolyn's two. The store was kept open till 9 on week nights, 11 on Saturday. 

When her husband was away, Carolyn Bryant never slept in the store, never stayed there alone after dark. Moreover, in the Delta, no white woman ever travels country roads after dark unattended by a man. 

This meant that during Roy's absences -- particularly since he had no car -- there was family

inconvenience. Each afternoon, a sister-in-law arrived to stay with Carolyn until closing time. Then, the two women, with their children, waited for a brother-in-law to convoy them to his home. Next morning, the sister-in-law drove Carolyn back. 

Juanita Milam had driven from her home in Glendora. She had parked in front of the store to the left; and under the front seat of this car was Roy Bryant's pistol, a .38 Colt automatic. Carolyn knew it was there. After 9, Juanita's husband, J. W. Milam, would arrive in his pickup to shepherd them to his home for the night. 

About 7:30 pm, eight young Negroes -- seven boys and a girl -- in a '46 Ford had stopped outside. They included sons, grandsons and a nephew of Moses (Preacher) Wright, 64, a 'cropper. They were between 13 and 19 years old. Four were natives of the Delta and others, including the nephew, Emmett (Bobo) Till, were visiting from the Chicago area. 

Bobo Till was 14 years old: born on July 25, 1941. He was stocky, muscular, weighing about 160, five feet four or five. Preacher later testified: "He looked like a man." 

Bobo's party joined a dozen other young Negroes, including two other girls, in front of the store. Bryant had built checkerboards there. Some were playing checkers, others were wrestling and "kiddin' about girls."  

Bobo bragged about his white girl. He showed the boys a picture of a white girl in his wallet; and to their jeers of disbelief, he boasted of success with her. 

"You talkin' mighty big, Bo," one youth said. "There's a pretty little white woman in the store. Since you know how to handle white girls, let's see you go in and get a date with her?" 

"You ain't chicken, are yuh, Bo?" another youth taunted him. 

Bobo had to fire or fall back. He entered the store, alone, stopped at the candy case. Carolyn was behind the counter; Bobo in front. He asked for two cents' worth of bubble gum. She handed it to him. He squeezed her hand and said: "How about a date, baby?" 

She jerked away and started for Juanita Milam. At the break between counters, Bobo jumped in front of her, perhaps caught her at the waist, and said: "You needn't be afraid o' me, Baby. I been with white girls before." 

At this point, a cousin ran in, grabbed Bobo and began pulling him out of the store. Carolyn now ran, not for Juanita, but out the front, and got the pistol from the Milam car. 

Outside, with Bobo being ushered off by his cousins, and with Carolyn getting the gun, Bobo executed the "wolf whistle" which gave the case its name:                                                                                                     

 

THE WOLF-WHISTLE MURDER: A NEGRO "CHILD" OR "BOY" WHISTLED AT HER AND THEY KILLED HIM.

 

That was the sum of the facts on which most newspaper readers based an opinion. 

The Negroes drove away; and Carolyn, shaken, told Juanita. The two women determined to keep the incident from their "Men-folks." They didn't tell J. W. Milam when he came to escort them home. 

By Thursday afternoon, Carolyn Bryant could see the story was getting around. She spent Thursday night at the Milams, where at 4 a.m. (Friday) Roy got back from Texas. Since he had slept little for five nights, he went to bed at the Milams' while Carolyn returned to the store. 

During Friday afternoon, Roy reached the store, and shortly thereafter a Negro told him what "the talk" was, and told him that the "Chicago boy" was "visitin' Preacher." Carolyn then told Roy what had happened.  

Once Roy Bryant knew, in his environment, in the opinion of most white people around him, for him to have done nothing would have marked him for a coward and a fool. 

On Friday night, he couldn't do anything. He and Carolyn were alone, and he had no car. Saturday was collection day, their busy day in the store. About 10:30 Saturday night, J. W. Milam drove by. Roy took him aside. 

"I want you to come over early in the morning," he said. "I need a little transportation."

J.W. protested: "Sunday's the only morning I can sleep. Can't we make it around noon?"

Roy then told him. "I'll be there," he said. "Early." 

J. W. drove to another brother's store at Minter City, where he was working. He closed that store about 12:30 a.m., drove home to Glendora. Juanita was away, visiting her folks at Greenville. J. W. had been thinking. He decided not to go to bed. He pumped the pickup -- a half-ton '55 Chevrolet -- full of gas and headed for Money. 

J. W. "Big Milam" is 36: six feet two, 235 pounds; an extrovert. Short boots accentuate his height; khaki trousers; red sports shirt; sun helmet. Dark-visaged; his lower lip curls when he chuckles; and though bald, his remaining hair is jet-black. 

He is slavery's plantation overseer. Today, he rents Negro-driven mechanical cotton pickers to

plantation owners. Those who know him say that he can handle Negroes better than anybody in the country. 

Big Milam soldiered in the Patton manner. With a ninth-grade education, he was commissioned in battle by the 75th Division. He was an expert platoon leader, expert street fighter, expert in night patrol, expert with the "grease gun," with every device for close range killing. A German bullet tore clear through his chest; his body bears "multiple shrapnel wounds." Of his medals, he cherishes one: combat infantryman's badge. 

Big Milam, like many soldiers, brought home his favorite gun: the .45 Colt automatic pistol.

"Best weapon the Army's got," he says. "Either for shootin' or sluggin'."

Two hours after Big Milam got the word -- the instant minute he could close the store -- he was looking for the Chicago Negro. 

 Big Milam reached Money a few minutes shy of 2 a.m., Sunday, August 28. The Bryants were asleep; the store was dark but for the all-night light. He rapped at the back door, and when Roy came, he said: "Let's go. Let's make that trip now." 

Roy dressed, brought a gun: this one was a .45 Colt. Both men were and remained -- cold sober. Big Milam had drunk a beer at Minter City around 9; Roy had had nothing. 

There was no moon as they drove to Preacher's house: 2.8 miles east of Money. 

Preacher's house stands 50 feet right of the gravel road, with cedar and persimmon trees in the yard. Big Milam drove the pickup in under the trees. He was bareheaded, carrying a five-cell flashlight in his left hand, the .45 in the right.Roy Bryant pounded on the door.

 

Preacher: "Who's that?"

Bryant: "Mr. Bryant from Money, Preacher." 

Preacher: "All right, sir. Just a minute."

Preacher came out of the screened-in porch.

Bryant: "Preacher, you got a boy from Chicago here?"

Preacher: "Yessir."

Bryant: "I want to talk to him."

Preacher: "Yessir. I'll get him."

 

Preacher led them to a back bedroom where four youths were sleeping in two beds. In one was Bobo Till and Simeon Wright, Preacher's youngest son. Bryant had told Preacher to turn on the lights; Preacher had said they were out of order. So only the flashlight was used. 

The visit was not a complete surprise. Preacher testified that he had heard of the "trouble," that he "sho' had" talked to his nephew about it. Bobo himself had been afraid; he had wanted to go home the day after the incident. The Negro girl in the party urged that he leave. "They'll kill him," she had warned.  

But Preacher's wife, Elizabeth Wright, had decided that the danger was being magnified; she had urged Bobo to "finish yo' visit." "I thought they might say something to him, but I didn't think they'd kill a boy," Preacher said.  

Big Milam shined the light in Bobo's face, said: "You the nigger who did the talking?"

"Yeah," Bobo replied.

Milam: "Don't say, 'Yeah' to me: I'll blow your head off. Get your clothes on."

Bobo had been sleeping in his shorts. He pulled on a shirt and trousers, then reached for his socks.

"Just the shoes," Milam hurried him.

"I don't wear shoes without socks," Bobo said: and he kept the gun-bearers waiting while he put on his socks, then a pair of canvas shoes with thick crepe soles. 

Preacher and his wife tried two arguments in the boy's behalf.

"He ain't got good sense," Preacher begged. "He didn't know what he was doing. Don't take him."

"I'll pay you gentlemen for the damages," Elizabeth Wright said.

"You niggers go back to sleep," Milam replied. 

They marched him into the yard, told him to get in the back of the pickup and lie down. He obeyed. They drove toward Money.

 

Elizabeth Wright rushed to the home of a white neighbor, who got up, looked around, but decided he could do nothing. Then, she and Preacher drove to the home of her brother, Crosby Smith, at Sumner; and Crosby Smith, on Sunday morning, went to the sheriff's office at Greenwood. 

The other young Negroes stayed at Preacher's house until daylight, when Wheeler Parker telephoned his mother in Chicago, who in turn notified Bobo's mother, Mamie Bradley, 33, 6427 S. St. Lawrence. 

Had there been any doubt as to the identity of the "Chicago boy who done the talking," Milam and Bryant would have stopped at the store for Carolyn to identify him. But there had been no denial. So they didn't stop at the store. At Money, they crossed the Tallahatchie River and drove west. 

 Their intention was to "just whip him... and scare some sense into him." And for this chore, Big Milam knew "the scariest place in the Delta." He had come upon it last year hunting wild geese. Over close to Rosedale, the Big River bends around under a bluff. "Brother, she's a 100-foot sheer drop, and she's a 100 feet deep after you hit." 

Big Milam's idea was to stand him up there on that bluff, "whip" him with the .45, and then shine the light on down there toward that water and make him think you're gonna knock him in.

"Brother, if that won't scare the Chicago -------, hell won't." 

Searching for this bluff, they drove close to 75 miles. Through Shellmound, Schlater, Doddsville,

Ruleville, Cleveland to the intersection south of Rosedale. There they turned south on Mississippi No. 1, toward the entrance to Beulah Lake. They tried several dirt and gravel roads, drove along the levee. Finally, they gave up: in the darkness, Big Milam couldn't find his bluff. 

They drove back to Milam's house at Glendora, and by now it was 5 a.m.. They had been driving nearly three hours, with Milam and Bryant in the cab and Bobo lying in the back. 

At some point when the truck slowed down, why hadn't Bobo jumped and run? He wasn't tied; nobody was holding him. A partial answer is that those Chevrolet pickups have a wraparound rear window the size of a windshield. Bryant could watch him. But the real answer is the remarkable part of the story. 

Bobo wasn't afraid of them! He was tough as they were. He didn't think they had the guts to kill him.

Milam: "We were never able to scare him. They had just filled him so full of that poison that he was hopeless." 

Back of Milam's home is a tool house, with two rooms each about 12 feet square. They took him in there and began "whipping" him, first Milam then Bryant smashing him across the head with those .45's.  

Pistol-whipping: a court-martial offense in the Army... but MP's have been known to do it.... And Milam got information out of German prisoners this way.

But under these blows Bobo never hollered -- and he kept making the perfect speeches to insure

martyrdom.  

Bobo: "You bastards, I'm not afraid of you. I'm as good as you are. I've 'had' white women. My

grandmother was a white woman." 

Milam: "Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers -- in their place -- I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you -- just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'" 

So Big Milam decided to act. He needed a weight. He tried to think of where he could get an anvil. Then he remembered a gin which had installed new equipment. He had seen two men lifting a discarded fan, a metal fan three feet high and circular, used in ginning cotton.

Bobo wasn't bleeding much. Pistol-whipping bruises more than it cuts. They ordered him back in the truck and headed west again. They passed through Doddsville, went into the Progressive Ginning Company. This gin is 3.4 miles east of Boyle: Boyle is two miles south of Cleveland. The road to this gin turns left off U.S. 61, after you cross the bayou bridge south of Boyle. 

Milam: "When we got to that gin, it was daylight, and I was worried for the first time. Somebody might see us and accuse us of stealing the fan." Bryant and Big Milam stood aside while Bobo loaded the fan. Weight: 74 pounds. The youth still thought they were bluffing. 

They drove back to Glendora, then north toward Swan Lake and crossed the "new bridge" over the Tallahatchie. At the east end of this bridge, they turned right, along a dirt road which parallels the river. After about two miles, they crossed the property of L.W. Boyce, passing near his house. 

About 1.5 miles southeast of the Boyce home is a lonely spot where Big Milam has hunted squirrels. The river bank is steep. The truck stopped 30 yards from the water.Big Milam ordered Bobo to pick up the fan.He staggered under its weight... carried it to the river bank. They stood silently... just hating one another.

Milam: "Take off your clothes." 

Slowly, Bobo pulled off his shoes, his socks. He stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, dropped his pants, his shorts. 

He stood there naked.

It was Sunday morning, a little before 7.

Milam: "You still as good as I am?"

Bobo: "Yeah."

Milam: "You still 'had' white women?"

Bobo: "Yeah."

That big .45 jumped in Big Milam's hand. The youth turned to catch that big, expanding bullet at his right ear. He dropped. 

They barb-wired the gin fan to his neck, rolled him into 20 feet of water.

For three hours that morning, there was a fire in Big Milam's back yard: Bobo's crepe soled shoes were hard to burn. Seventy-two hours later -- eight miles downstream -- boys were fishing. They saw feet sticking out of the water. Bobo. 

The majority -- by no means all, but the majority -- of the white people in Mississippi 1) either approve Big Milam's action or else 2) they don't disapprove enough to risk giving their "enemies" the satisfaction of a conviction. 

The images that came to my mind at that time, couldn’t even begin to come close to what I saw some years later. The pictures of Emmett Till lying in an open casket seared an indelible scar in my mind. He was unrecognizable as a human being. Mamie Till demanded that her son’s body be returned to Chicago. She defied orders of the Mississippi authorities, who had sealed his casket, and ordered that it be opened. Her son’s mutilated face displayed to the entire world what Southern racism had done.  

Thousands of Chicagoans walked by the open casket in 1955 at the Raynor Funeral Home, aghast at what they saw. Years later,  Rosa Parks told Mamie Till that the photograph of her son, Emmett’s disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus.  

 

There were three lynching’s in Mississippi in 1955. All of them made the news up north.  I was a very young boy, and I was already aware of what hatred was capable of doing to people. I knew of the Holocaust in Germany and I knew of the horror that faced blacks right in my own country if they stepped “out of line” in the deep south.  I also knew that I detested bigotry and racism and those that practiced it should never be trusted. Something had to change, and that kind of change comes from inside of people.  They have to want to change, and I saw far too many that simply didn’t want to do that. They know it’s wrong, but try to find ways to justify it so they can convince themselves of their own righteousness.  It was at this time that I lost all interest in religion.

Chapter 2: Early Years

Chapter 2

Early Years

       As I grew up, I found friends to play with in Forest Park. The town was small enough where everyone knew everyone else. Most of the families had deep roots in that town, and everyone knew your parents, so, if you got in trouble, it would get back to your folks quickly and you’d pay the price of your foolishness.

This was my first experience with prejudice. None of my friends knew about my odd mixture of family. I went to the local Protestant church and with a very simple name like Brown, it was assumed that I was like the rest of my friends; White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Many of my friends were Catholic and although I found their rituals somewhat confusing we all played together in Little League and enjoyed spending the summer in the local pool. They had things in their house like “Holy Water”, and they had to go to confession which seemed weird to me. Also it was a sin to not go to church on Sunday. They had their own schools and the nuns looked scary. The priests spoke Latin, and I wasn’t allowed to go inside their church if I wasn’t a Catholic. They also had a bunch of saints and I didn’t understand any of that. I reasoned that I could never be a Catholic. It was way too complicated. If you were a Catholic, you really took the rituals seriously.  My dad slept through church services.  There was no way we could ever be Catholic. 

Some of my friends began using slurs to describe people. They would utter anti-Semitic epithets in my presence thinking that as one of them, I would be in on the joke and find humor in their ugliness. I didn’t. They were hideous descriptions of my own family, and I found myself in many a fight back then. I was a pretty tough little kid back then, and I always won those fights. If you insulted my family, you paid with a bloody nose.  I was keenly aware of the Holocaust that had taken place in Germany just 10 years earlier. What was this animosity toward the Jews all about? They couldn’t understand why I would take offense at their lame attempt at racist humor. After all… I was as white and Christian as they were. There was something alien about this. My understanding of Christianity was completely different than what I was hearing from those claiming to be Christians. However, it wasn’t limited to the Jews.  In fact, it got uglier. 

My only experience with black people at this time came from watching Amos and Andy and listening to my parent’s records of Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, and others that I might have seen on TV.  There were no African-Americans in Forest Park Illinois back then. So, I was entertained by them, and offered the stereotyped caricatures of servants, and cab drivers, and a few super athletes. There were black people in neighboring Maywood and the local high school was integrated.  But prior to high school, my own experience with African-Americans was very limited. I rarely saw any in person. But the words describing them were painful to hear and burned my ears. I was always a champion for the underdog. I even became a Cubs fan and my favorite player was Ernie Banks. The “N” word was forbidden in my home. In fact, it was forbidden outside my home. If either of my parents heard that I’d used that word, life as I knew it would come to an end. It was understood to be vile and never to be used in any context. I would be facing the wrath of God Himself if that word came out of my mouth. And I believed it. I had been taught the Golden Rule when I was old enough to actually converse with my mother, and nothing in my religion or any religion could distill the truth as much as that simple concept. If I understood that, and lived by that axiom, everything else would always be clear to me. 

However, my friends used the “N” word freely. I was called “N-lover” when I would admonish anyone using that word. When they used that word, they were insulting and literally spitting on the lives of the great Ernie Banks, and Jackie Robinson and they were Hero’s to me. I was already sensitive to anti-Semitism, and saw this as coming from the very same attitude that was held by people that I found ugly. Their ugliness was revealed in their words, and their words told me what they thought of people who were different from them. I didn’t like them, and I didn’t like them thinking that I was anything like them.  I may have been white, and I may have been a Christian, but I was nothing like them.  Nor would I have wanted to be. Even at my young age, I found racism a sign of ignorance and stupidity and that was something I found scary. Hate was a dangerous thing when it was left unchallenged. Ignorant and stupid people do ignorant and stupid things, and people get hurt along the way.  I was beginning to hear about lynchings in the south. Three took place in 1955. I knew what those were, but to me, they were something from the old west. It was old history and not part of my era.  

The ideology behind lynching, directly connected with denial of political and social equality, was stated forthrightly by Benjamin Tillman, a South Carolina governor and senator, speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1900: 

“We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.” 

 

Often victims were lynched by a small group of white vigilantes late at night. Sometimes, however, lynchings became mass spectacles with a circus-like atmosphere because they were intended to emphasize majority power.

 

 Children often attended these public lynchings.

A large lynching might be announced beforehand in the newspaper. There were cases in which a lynching was timed so that a newspaper reporter could make his deadline. Photographers sold photos for postcards to make extra money. The event was publicized so that the intended audience of African Americans and whites who might challenge the society, were  warned to stay in their places. I learned that a person like myself might not be safe in certain places of this country. When the majority of people were hateful, you’d better be hateful too, or you’d become a target of that hate. In August of 1955, that became all too real. http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html

Growing up White in Racist America - Chapter 1; Beginnings

Chapter 1

Beginnings

 I was born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park Illinois, on December 10, 1947. My father; Donald, was a Christian of Irish and German decent. His family roots in America date back to at least the Civil War period and they lived in the north. I had a Great Grandmother named O’Neil, a tiny woman from Ireland who owned a boarding house in Evanston during the Depression years. Someone from his family had served in the Union Army as I was told, most likely on my paternal Grandfather’s side. 

 My mother, Marilyn, was a second generation American. Her mother was born in London and her father was from Bucharest Romania. Both of them came to America as children and both of Jewish decent. Both families settled in the small blue-collar, very white town of Forest Park, Illinois west of Chicago. My father’s family was originally Catholic. He was raised by his grandparents, and they were religiously indifferent and didn’t actually care about where he went to church as long as he went somewhere.  All of his friends were Lutheran and he simply went where they went. And so, he was now a Lutheran. 

My mother, while being born into a Jewish family did something unheard of.  As a young girl around the age of 12, she converted to Christianity. This obviously didn’t go over well in the family, but she was adamant about it and remained a devout Christian for the remainder of her life. 

 As they were growing up in this small town, my mother had her group of friends, and my father had his. Both groups knew each other and began dating in high school. They finished high school in 1940 and the boys married the girls and went off to fight in World War II. After the war, they returned to their lives in Forest Park and started their families. The town was all white and stayed that way for many years. 

This is where the confusion began, and my entire life has been spent living in the middle of two very separate worlds.  My mother’s parents refused to recognize the marriage of their daughter to a non-Jew and couldn’t accept my father. Neither of my parents cared, and assumed correctly that time would have a way of solving the divide.  When first my brother, and then I arrived on the scene, my grandparents had found a way to see through the problem of their own prejudice.  The innocence of a baby has a way of cutting through bigotry. 

As a very young child, we lived in a two-flat building owned by my maternal grandparents. They lived on the top floor, and we lived on the first floor. I spent almost every day upstairs with my grandmother who secretly introduced me to coffee. It smelled so good, and she would always prepare a glass of milk with coffee and sugar in it and tell me not to tell my mother. It was our secret, and I was thrilled to have a secret with my grandma.  

My first awareness that something was different was at family gatherings. I was only about 4 years old at the time, but this was a time when I was introduced to my cousins and we would play together at every opportunity, which for the most part would take place at Thanksgiving. We would generally have these gatherings at my grandparents place upstairs. I loved all my relatives on my mother’s side, and they would always pay special attention to me and my older brother, but I noticed certain customs that I was unfamiliar with.  At this time, I was walking up the alley which was very safe and only one block, to the church where I would attend Sunday school and where my mother sang in the choir. My father was not very religious and when he went to church, he generally slept through the service, sometimes even snoring to the embarrassment of my mother who sat with the choir. I would spend those mornings in

Sunday school learning about David and Goliath, King Solomon, and the story of Jesus.  At Christmas we learned the little hymns and at Easter we’d learn some more.  But during our family gatherings, my uncles and cousins and even my brother and I had to wear the Yarmulke and stand with the men and listen to prayers in a language that I didn’t understand.  

I was unaware of what being Jewish was, but I knew there was something different going on. My own family never adopted any of the rituals that seemed so important to my mother’s relatives. We were invited into that world and we would be respectful of it. The only thing I really learned was Oi Veh which was a “catch all” phrase, and that chicken soup cured the common cold.   

At Christmas, an entirely different set of traditions was in place. We would get together with my father’s family, and they were all Lutherans. We always had a Christmas tree, and celebrated that special day with a great dinner and gifts under a tree. My other cousins celebrated something called Hanukah and lit candles.  

   So here I was, at the age of 5 with two entirely different sets of rituals and traditions and in some cases even languages. But I loved both sets of relatives and knew they were integral to who I was. My identity was embraced by both groups.  These were my people, and I was loyal to my people. One group, I could trace back to the civil war. The other…went back to the time of Moses.