S tre e t R oots • April 21-27, 2017
Book Review
Page 7
Writing to save a life: The Louis Till file
John Edgar W idem an’s new book explores the unjustice delivered to E m m ett T ill’s father
BY JOE MARTIN
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
T
he tragic story of Emmett Till still
shocks the conscience of our nation.
It was the summer of 1955. Fourteen
years of age, Emmett was a good natured
Black adolescent from Chicago. He traveled
by train to visit family in rural Mississippi. It
was his first time in the Deep South, a far
cry from the northern city of his origin. His
mother Mamie was nervous about her son’s
journey. Just before departure Emmett gave
her his watch. He doubted he would need it
where he was headed. Emmett did keep the
ring on his finger. It was his late father
Louis Till’s ring. That ring enabled
authorities to identify the horrifically
mutilated body of the murdered boy when
retrieved from the Tallahatchie River.
A ramshackle grocery store in Money,
Miss., was owned by Roy Bryant and his
wife Carolyn. She was tending the counter
one sultry afternoon. Emmett Till entered
and purchased some candy. Allegedly, he
whistled at her. In the midst of Kian country
it was a dangerous transgression of the
ironclad racial mores of that place and time.
A few nights later, Emmett was abducted
forcibly from his uncle’s home and
subsequently tortured and murdered. Roy
Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were
accused of the barbaric deed. It is now
assumed that others were also present.
Held in a sweltering courtroom, the trial
was a travesty. Members of the all white
jury subscribed to the doctrines of white
superiority and race hatred. Without any
question, they possessed a ruthless
disregard for the dignity and personhood of
black people. Carolyn Bryant gave a lurid
account of what she claimed had happened
at the store. Roy Bryant and Milam were
acquitted. Recently, Carolyn Bryant would
confess that her utterances in that corrupt
courtroom were a fabrication. She
expressed regret about young Emmett’s
kidnapping and hideous death. Such
contrition came decades too late for the
dead teenager and his devastated mother.
Mamie Till would insist that her murdered
son’s monstrously deformed face, head and
body be openly displayed prior to burial, so
all the world could see what violent racism
had done to her child. The nightmarish
story of Emmett Till was a major spark in
the inchoate Civil Rights Movement.
In “Writing to Save a Life” award-winning
author John Edgar Wideman calls attention
to Louis Till, Emmett’s father, a father the
boy never knew. The book was 10 years in
the making. A recent portrait of Wideman in
The New York Times Magazine states: “It is
the late-phase masterwork of a man still
trying desperately to figure out how
America works at a time when his perennial
concerns — freedom and confinement,
policing, fatherhood, the inheritance of
trauma and ontological stigma — feel as
pertinent as ever.”
Mamie Till’s relationship with husband
Louis was not a happy one. He was abusive.
With World War II in full swing, Louis stood
before a judge and was given the choice of
going to prison or joining the U.S. Army. He
chose the latter and wound up a soldier in
Italy. In June of 1944 in the Italian town of
Civitavecchia he would be accused of
“assault, rape, murder.” Wideman’s perusal
of the convoluted military court transcript
leads to the observation that young Louis
Till’s trial was a sloppy and tendentious
affair. Argues Wideman: “Colored soldiers
whom the army considered second-class
citizens were suspects who possessed no
rights investigators need respect. The logic
of Southern lynch law prevailed. All colored
males are guilty of desiring to rape white
women, so any colored soldier the agents
hanged could not be innocent.”
Louis said nothing in his defense. He sat
unyielding, silent. Wideman imagines Louis
resigned to a racially charged enclosure
tightening inexorably about him with no
Louis said
nothing in his
defense. Be
sat unyielding,
silent. Wideman
imagines Louis
resigned to a
racially charged
Louis Till
enclosure tight
ening inexorably
about him with no doubt about
the outcome. He vas hanged
along with another black sol
dier on July 2, 1945.
doubt about the outcome. He was hanged
along with another black soldier on July 2,
1945. Says Wideman: “Till’s crime is a
crime of being, I decided, after spending
hours and hours one afternoon, poring
through the file, an afternoon not unlike
numerous others, asking myself how and
why the law shifted gears in its treatment of
colored soldiers during World War II. Asking
why colored men continue to receive
summary or no justice, a grossly
disproportionate share of life sentences and
death sentences today.”
East of Paris is a cemetery containing 96
American soldiers who were executed for
serious crimes. Markers have no names,
only numbers. Louis Till is Number 73. Of
the 96 buried men, 80 are Black. Wideman
writes: “War stories. Sea stories. Love
stories. Till file full of stories. Of lies and
truth. Shake them up. Dump them on the
table. Then what. Why. Louis Till not stuck
like a bone in the county’s throat. America’s
forgotten Louis Till, no sweat. It’s me. I’m
the one who can’t forget. My wars. My
loves. My fear of violent death. I’m afraid
Louis Till might be inside me. Afraid that
someone looking for Louis Till is coming to
pry me apart.”
An incongruous episode in the matter of
Louis Till involves the revered and notorious
poet Ezra Pound. Pound became enamored
of fascism and spent the war in Italy making
anti-Semitic pro-Axis radio broadcasts. Once
Italy was in Allied hands, Pound was
arrested and thrown alone into a fortified
cage in the same detention camp where
Louis Till was incarcerated. “Old skinny
white motherfucker army gon hang, they
say. Poet, they say. Dry as a dried up
rattlesnake skin.” Proximate to the Black
prisoners, Pound listened to the cadence
and vernacular of their talk and came to
know of the prisoner the other Black
soldiers dubbed “Saint” Louis.
In his Pisan Canto 74, Pound refers to the
death of Louis Till:
“and Till was hung yesterday,
for murder and rape with trimmings. ”
It is an astounding conjunction of two
disparate individuals. A young black soldier
hanged ignominiously after a confusing trial
replete with contradictory testimony and a
renowned white American poet who
conspired publicly for years with the enemy.
In time, Pound was freed.
Months after they had been acquitted of
killing Emmett Till, Roy Bryant and Milam
would publicly admit in a magazine article
that they had committed the murder. A
grand jury was considering revisiting the
case and charging the two with kidnapping.
But James Oliver Eastland, a segregationist
senator, revealed Louis Till’s court martial
and execution. Louis was, “conjured like an
evil black rabbit from an evil white hat,”
Wideman says. That ended further
investigation into the death of Emmett Till.
Let us not forget the stories of Emmett
Till and his father. Justice, where art thou?
Courtesy of Street Roots sister paper, Real
Change News, Seattle.
ACROSS
DOUGHNUT
CROSSWORD PUZZLE
1.
4.
6.
Fermentation agent
Have a bite
Tree fluid
7.
Cake ingredient
8.
Three-ply cookie
9.
Hook's henchman
12. Ground grain
14. The gift o f __
16. Tease or ridicule
1 7. Francis or Kevin?
do w n
1.
Affirmative I
2.
Type of fritter
3.
Analyze or try
4.
Cake ingredient
5.
Très
8.
Deal
10. Potter's practice
11. Noshl
13. Late rapper; abbr.
15. __ appétit
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