Authors discuss then < 1955 mur of emmett till, and the role of these events in the Civil Rights Movement. Cspan recorded the panel at the 2018 festival of books in nashville, tennessee. Greetings. My name is lee williams, jr. Im an associate professor of africanamerican and public history at Tennessee State university, and i will be the moderator for this panel. First id like to welcome you to nashville. If youre not a nashville resident, welcome, welcome. And welcome to the greatest library in america. This session will run precisely 50 minutes i am told. So we will give both our authors 20 minutes to speak, and well allocate ten minutes for question and answer. I was also admonished to remind you if youre really enjoying yourself this southern festival of books depends upon individual donations. So if you really enjoy what youve seen over the past couple of days id encourage you to donate as much as you can. Were in for a treat today. I asked these two gentlemen for bios a couple of days ago. Theyre esteemed scholars but theyre also some of the most modest men that ive met. So ill give you a brief introduction of them and introduction to them, and i encourage you to speak with them after the session ends. Our first presenter this morning is elliot gorn. Professor gorn is the joseph a. Gagliano chair in American History in chicago. Hes the author of five books. These include the manly art, a brief history of american sports. Mother joans the most dangerous woman in america. And dillangers a wild ride. To the right sits professor schmidt. Hes professor and codirector of the institute of the Supreme Court of the United States at Chicago College of law. Hes also faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation and the editor of law and social inquiry. Professor schmidt teaches and writes primarily in areas of constitutional law and legal history. Ladies and gentlemen, i ask you to join me in welcoming both our esteemed scholars. Thank you. Can you hear me . First, lee, thank you very much for the introduction and thanks to the organizers of this amazing festival. Ive never been here before and im not sure why. Its really been wonderful. Talking about the till murder just a little its hard to know exactly how much people know about it, so ill start by telling the story and then maybe tell a few things that are a little less obvious that working on this book for eight years sort of helped alert me to or made me more aware of. Takes me a long time to do a book like this, and you always think this one is going to be easy. Its not going to be hard, its going to be straight and then it just kills you. If you know the story at all forgive me, but let me try a really capsule version. Emmett till was a 14yearold kid who one summer went down to the mississippi delta to visit his uncle and his cousins. Hed bip there before a couple of times, two, thirtytwo times actually. And now hes 14 and hes going with his uncle whod been up in chicago, moses wright, and he goes down to mississippi and spends time with his cousins, works a bit at the harvest. Its cottonpicking time. And after hes there about a week he goes to a local cross roads store with his cousins. They drive over in money and this story is told many, many ways. And thats one thing about the emmett till story. Yes, there are facts we know, important facts but there are also facts we dont know. And people fill in gaps and sometimes its not so much theyre wrong but the way we tell the story. People tell it story for particular meanings, to try to derive particular meanings from them. Im not post modernist, dont worry. There are things you cant know. He goes to briiants Grocery Store in money, mississippi, with his cousins. And they go in one by one, buy a few things. There are a few young men playing checkers on the porch. And emmett till is in for a minute or so and we know he goes in, and the woman comes out and starts going to her car to get something, a gun she later says. And on the way while shes going there emmett till and this is pretty clear, her cousins who were with him whistled at her, a wolf whistle. His cousins attest to this. And everyone who was not a chicagoan which is to say everyone else understood what this meant. Emmett and his cousins and their friends run for their car and take off back to measliest wrights home. At one point they even think someone is trailing them in a car and they dive into the fields. A few days pass by and this seems to have passed, no problem. Even though theres a foretelling these folks are not going to let this pass, the bryant family. A few days pass and on saturday night emmett goes with his uncle, his cousins to greenwood, mississippi, for the annual shopping night, entertainment as people do. They come back about midnight. About 2 00 in the morning theres a knock on the door. Two men come and kid nnap emmet till. It turns out they admit they kidnap him, they say they let him go. And they are the husband and the cousins half brother. They both end up in jail, and theres a trial. The trial takes place just a month later. And theyre both exonerated. In an hour a jury finds them not guilty. Now, as aaron henry, one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement said, they kidnapped till i should say, and his body turns up three days later beaten, shot, and submerged with a 75 gin mill fan around his neck in the talla hatchy river. And thats when these two stand trial for murder. As aaron henry said black men and black boys had been found killed for years and years and years and it was never a big to do, but he said i never understood why this one became such a big event. Well, it was. It was Headline News throughout america. And when the trial took place and especially the result of the trial it was Headline News actually throughout the world. The United StatesInformation Agency had its hand full trying to control this story and spin it. The trial takes place in one hour. The jury of 12 white men find the two defendants not guilty. This is just an enormous event. All right, so i told just a very, very brief version here of the story. Theres so much thats not right in that story actually, and it matters when you try to piece together exactly what happened. For example, emmett till was, yes, when this happened he did live with his mother on the south side of chicago, but he spent most of life in a town called argot. Argot is in cook county but not in chicago. Its at the very, very western edge of chicago. His mother had come from mississippi as an infant, lived in argot, had a home, went to school there. The school was integrated. She graduated very high in her class. Sports teams were integrated. It was no racial paradise. Far, far from that. But block to block there were white and black families. Predominantly black here, predominantly white there. But if you think about why would emmett not be able to take quite seriously jim crow segregation, not take seriously the prerogatives they thought they had, that he had insulted his wife. Of course in the trial Carolyn Bryant does not just say emmett whistled at her, she says that he grabbed her, that he made threatening gestures and words, that this was an attempt borderline easily interpreted as an attempted rape, so she claimed. All right, so till comes from argot, not from chicago. Its only the last couple of years of his life he lived in chicago and every other week he was back in argot. Its where his friends were. Thats an important detail. There were only two killers. Well, there are only two who stood trial. We know now. We dont know exactly what others did. But we do know there were several other members especially of the family or friends of the f family who were involved. The beating and killing of emmett till took place on the plantation. Several other members of the family are involved. And also seen in the back of the truck as they were driving emmett till to his fate and his death its unclear two or three africanamerican men who as it turned out worked for jw and very much under his sway. So the story gets more and more complicated. Theres an article about this story thats published months afterwards by a man named William Bradford huey, an alabama journalist and he tells what he says is the truth about the till killing. And the truth about the till killing is that it was done just by the two men. He actually knew better. He knew there were other killers. And that the reason they did it was that emmett till was this as he depicts him this militant sexually rapacious black man who was in their faces, milam and bryant about how he was just as good as they were. And thats when he insisted yeah hed had white girls and he would again. Thats when j. W. Milam shot him. As far as we can tell that is completely made up. Where he thinks he got that its hard to say, but hes one of these journalists constantly telling you hes a truth teller. He doesnt care whos hurt hes going to tell the truth. He made it up. Another thing about this that you always get the impression when you read about this is this was a kangaroo court, a completely unfair trial. Actually, theres some interesting detail about that really very important. The judge was a man named curtis from mississippi. And journalists north and south talked about what a fair and dignified and proper trial he conducted in what evidence he allowed, how he treated the witnesses. For example, he would not allow in court in front of the jury Carolyn Bryant begins to tell her story about what emmett till did to her and the jury is ordered out and he insists that not be admitted. Because if you think about it what would that have to do with why the two killed emmett till. They would have to argue that someone was in danger of their life. Theres no place in a proper jury trial for an honor killing which is what was being argued. No, he wouldnt allow that. The prosecutor a man named curtis chatam also say some say at least in part that the character of Atticus Finch was influenced by chatam. Journalists north and south, black and white commented how good a job he did with very little time, how clearly especially when they described his closing arguments how serious he was about this. None of that mattered. It did want matter a bit again because the jury was 12 white men. Why were there only 12 white men on a jury in mississippi, because tal hatchy county which was two thirds black had not a single africanamerican voter. Which makes you think about voting in an era of voter suppression. So many things, again, about the story. The photo of emmett, the very famous photo. The photo of till in his coffin. And theres a way thats often depicted. In the new yorker just a couple of days ago David Remnick was it something i said . Are we good . The editor of the new yorker David Remnick wrote, as many, many people have before him that the famous photo of emmett till in his coffin that people saw that and they were converted, that the Civil Rights Movement begins with that photo. Well, theres an assumption there, and that is that people white and black saw that photo. It never appeared in the mainstream press. It was not in look magazine or life magazine or the newspaper. It was in jet magazine and the chicago defender and a few africanamerican newspaper. Africanamericans literally by the hundreds of thousands saw that photo, and you know that from people who talked about it, representative john lewis, anne moody in her memoir. Mohamed ali talk about emmett till and talk about that photo. But white people didnt see that picture if at all until 1997 with eyes on the prize. And slowly in other documentaries that photo begins to appear. Another just a small piece i think is interesting very recent if you know in another recent book on till by Timothy Tyson about the blood of emmett till Carolyn Bryant confesses that she lied. Shes not very specific in what she confesses, she says Something Like that boy didnt deserve what happened to him. What was not widely reported is about two months ago in the jackson clarion ledger jerry mitchell, an outstanding reporter for the clarion ledger reported that carolyn her name is now Carolyn Dothan recanted, and told them i never told them that. And actually tyson doesnt have her saying that. He has notes but not a recording. All of this adds up to how we think about the till trial. Ill have one more before i stop. The fbi opened the till case in 2004 and they investigated really very thoroughly until 2006. They had avoided the case at all costs in 1955 in every way they could. But they were very thorough in 2004 and 2005. And of course people, Carolyn Bryant, Carolyn Dothan is still alive and her sisterinlaw, j. W. Milams wife is still alive. They spent a couple of hours interviewing them both. Theyre both close now. Carolyn bryant said i dont remember, i dont think about it, i dont really want to talk about it. And Juanita Milam is pretty much the same. Shes there alone because her husband was out trucking shrimp at the gulf for his brother j. W. And hed never left her alone in the store before. This was the first time shed been there. This kidnapping takes place at twilight, and shes then talking about what happened, and she says out of the blue it never made sense to me this whole thing being about a whistle or a wink, and you could almost hear the fbi agents inhale, you know, with what do you mean a whistle or a wink, your sisterinlaw he says, no, no, he he came and laid hands on her. It was a wouldbe rape, and she says no i dont think so. I think it was just about a whistle or a wink. The cousin said he whistled at her. I think she was just afraid to be in the store. I think she told this story because she wanted roy to stop leaving her alone and he would mind the store. Is that true . Is that what happened . Theres no way to know other than what she said. She was there. She was in the store with her kids, but is it really that simple . We really dont know. She said Something Else after that that was really interesting. She started talking about fear. She started talking about how in her life she had been around africanamerican people and was not afraid of them. But carolyn, her sisterinlaw, had never been around black folks and was really afraid of them. And that so resonates with the last words carolyn spoke in the trial and then to the fbi. I was scared to death. It makes us think about race and racism, yes, hatred, of course. But fear also. We dont talk about fear enough, almost the ancestor of hatred. All right, thats i guess enough and you can ask some questions after. Thank you. Hello. So today im going to be talking about my recently published book titled the sit ins, protests and legal change in the civil rights era. Im going to start off my talk by laying the opening scene of the book. It began with a conversation. Four young africanamerican men in the first year at North Carolina agriculture and Technical College in a dormitory room discussing their hopes and frustration. It was late 1959 and then early 1960. And the many topics talked about the one they kept returning to was the challenge of leading a dignified life in the jim crow south. They talked and talked some more and then in the words of the students we got tired of talking about it and we decided to do something. Later in the afternoon on february 1, 1960, the four students entered a store in downtown greensborough. They purchased a few items in the store and sat down to the lunch counter. Im sorry, the waitress, told them we dont serve coloreds in here. With one restriction, theyre not allowed to sit at the lunch counter. The students pointed out theyd just been served at the counter and they asked why they were refused at this one. This is public place. If it isnt, why dont you sell membership cards . But they wouldnt serve us one recounted so we just sat there until the lunch counter closed. They returned the following morning this time with reinforcements, 21 in total. They sat. The next morning they were back again. The students sat in shifts throughout the day, talked quietly among themselves. Some brought schoolbooks and used the time to keep up with their work. By the end of the week an estimated 200 students had taken part in the green borough sit ins. It was not the first time africanamericans protested discrimination in this way but what separated these from those that came before is what followed. These protests inspired others to sit in, to march, to picket, organize boycotts and in some cases go to jail, be abused and be beaten. A week of remarkable events in greensborough turned into an inspiring assault on racial practices in the south. Three different cities in several different states had sit in protests. A month later, after two months 48 cities and 11 states had sitins take place. In all an estimated 50,000 people took part in a sit in movement in the 1960s. The numbers arrested for their courageous actions would eventually reach into the thousands. Thats the scene i setup in the beginning of the book. And the project of the book is to tell a story about why this happened and the significance of what happened. I have two primary goals for the book. One is a quite simple one which is to fill in a gap. There is no book before this one on the student sitin movement. And this is really a striking fact to me when i started this project because this project actually grew out of a law School Seminary paper i was burking on and i came across fascinating cases involving appeals of convictions for sit in protests and i wrote a paper on it. I thought there would be books on the sitin movement and i found to my surprise theres actually no single book on the sitin movement. So quite simply this is book that just needed to be written. This is obviously such an important part of our history and i do have an argument about the sitins something i dont think weve quite appreciated. And the argument is as follows. We cant understand why the sitins happened and what they achieved without paying attention to law and including institutional ques