Hicks, Part 2: Till murder witnesses' lives were endangered

White Reporters Doublecrossed Probers Seeking Lost Witnesses.

James L. Hicks

Cleveland Call and Post, October 15, 1955

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I got into my rented car with Mississippi tags and headed back from Glendora in the direction of Sumner.

When I reached the little town of Webb about a mile and a half away and almost half way back to Sumner I noticed a dirt road which I reasoned if it were straight would cut across country and hit the highway leading back to Mound Bayou.

I stopped the car, consulted my map, reasoned that I was guessing right and headed down the dirt road to take the short cut.

If I had known then what I know now I would never have taken that dirt road.

Nothing happened to me on it but subsequent events proved what could have happened.

The road led me in back of the state penitentiary at Parchman, Mississippi and I heaved a sigh of relief when I finally came out of its unpaved dust and rejoined the main highway.

Tell Experience

When I arrived back in Mound Bayou, Simeon Booker, Cloytde Murdock and photographer Jackson of the Johnson Publications out of Chicago were anxious to tell me of an experience they had had on their first day at Sumner.

They had gone to Money[,] which is below Glendora[,] and on their way back they too had seen the dirt road and reasoned as I did that it was a short cut.

But somehow as they went down the road they had become turned around and ended up going down a dead end road that led into the fields.

As they approached the dead end they encountered a truck load of white men all armed with shotguns and pistols, driving up the lonely road meeting them. They stopped, turned around and headed back. Upon questioning the presence of the guns they were told that the men were “deer hunting.” However, on their arrival back in Mound Bayou they were told that deer hunting season had not yet started in Mississippi.

When I arrived back in Mound Bayou I told Dr. T. R. M. Howard[,] militant leader to the Delta[,] what I had found. I then learned that certain information which tied in beautifully with what I had.

He had been receiving reports for days that there had been two men on the truck with Emmett Till but he had not been able to establish who they were. He also had information on others such as Willie Reed and Mandy Bradley[,] whom he told me were willing to come forward and testify at the proper time.

Unearth Witnesses

Dr. Howard had given this information to other colored reporters but he had warned them not to publish a word about it until he could round up the witnesses and get them out of danger before stories broke in the press that they had valuable information which could lead to conviction. He impressed upon me and others that once a story got into the papers their lives would not be worth a nickel.

There then began some of the most trying days of my career as a reporter. I knew I was on something big and I wanted to break it with my papers right away.

The question was how to do so without tipping the white people of Mississippi off and thereby exposing myself and the innocent cotton pickers to bodily harm.

I argued that I should break the story. But Dr. Howard and my colleagues argued “How.” They warned me that the wires out of Mound Bayou were not safe and they said it would be simply folly to put the story on Western Union and think that it would not get all over town.

All day Monday I worked through the trial almost in a daze, wrestling with whether I should plunge into my story of the two witnesses or hold off a little longer as Dr. Howard and others suggested.

[I filed copy on the testimony of the Rev. Moses Wright and Mrs. Mamie Bradley and let it go at that.]

Tuesday I continued to press for a release of the story. For by this time some of the white reporters had got wind of what we were working on and had asked me if I knew anything of a man named “Too Tight.”

In one story I filed through Western Union on Tuesday I alluded strongly to important and new witnesses which might come up in the trial. I came as near as I could to telling my office that something big was about to break without putting any of the witnesses on the spot.

This was the fear which the others had and which I must admit made sense at the time. They knew that Sheriff Strider of Tallahatchie County was a witness for the defense, that he had said he doubted the body was that of Emmett Till and that he had shown hostility to colored people working on the case.

Fear Harm To Witnesses

They felt and I agreed that if Strider learned that we were going to produce some eye witnesses to the murder he would tip off the defense and others working with them and our witnesses would either be spirited away or come to bodily harm.

At first this sounded fantastic to me. To think that one could not trust the Sheriff. But when I looked at the hard cold facts that Strider had said the body was not Till’s, that he was a witness against the state and that if “Too Tight” was in the Charleston jail Strider was the man who put him there, I agreed that it did not make sense to tip off Strider.

Then Ruby Hurley[,] NAACP field secretary[,] came to town and in a session in my hotel room which will live long in my memory I told Ruby what my problem was and told her that I could not see how I could sit on the story any longer no matter who was threatened by its publication.

Dr. Howard and my colleagues were all against my filing the story. They kept saying[,] “We don’t want to get anybody killed. Wait.”

Plan Shift

I put it up squarely to Ruby. She came through like a champion. She said that the evidence which we had was enough to stop the trial and shift it over to Sunflower County. Our witnesses were willing to testify that the crime was committed in Sunflower County instead of Tallahatchie County.

And she pointed out that if the case went to the jury in Tallahatchie County the two men would never have to stand trial again in another county because of double jeopardy. She said it was important that the evidence be made public right away before the case closed and went to the jury.

Ruby won the day on that point. But she stated that the story should be given the widest possible play on the dailies so that the public pressure could help to step in and stop the trial.

That meant that we had to call in white reporters since many of the weekly papers had already gone to the press. But who?

Simeon Booker, a Nieman fellow[,] suggested the name of Clark Porteous of the Memphis Press Scimitar who is also a Nieman fellow. I suggested that we add to it John Popham of the New York Times who was covering the story for the Times.

We agreed that we could call them in on it right away and that we’d have them ask the Sheriff where “Too Tight” was and to notify the Prosecutor and the District Attorney that we had new evidence to produce if they could offer the witnesses protection. We felt that these two men were men we could trust and we ruled out any other whites on the story either because no one in the group knew them well enough––or knew them too well to be trusted.

Makes Error

It was here that Dr. Howard committed what I will always feel was a tactical mistake. He was seated there in my room and suddenly he was going to Memphis to meet Congressman Diggs. Our agreement was sealed that we would notify Porteous and Popham and no one else.

Dr. Howard left. But a few minutes later we got word that Porteous and a “carload of reporters from Clarksdale” were coming down to hear the “story of the new witnesses.”

Now we had agreed that no one but Porteous and Popham would be let in on the story but when Porteous arrived he came without Popham and instead had with him two white reporters of the Jackson, Mississippi Daily News[,] regarded by many as one of the most inflammatory papers in the state!

It now appears that Dr. Howard, who had been pledging to me secrecy all the time, had suddenly just thrown the whole story to the wolves. I was hurt and I said so. Ruby was shocked and she said so. We then began to wonder what would happen to our witnesses because through our underground with them we had informed them that nothing would appear in the press until they were off the plantation in safe hands.

Spills Beans

When the three white reporters showed up[,] Dr. Howard, who had not gone to Memphis[,] sat down with them in an insurance office in Mound Bayou. Without learning who they were or pledging them to any off the record secrecy he began to tell them every word of the evidence he had and that which we had produced.

Then after telling them all, he told them that they could not break the story until the next afternoon because he first wanted to get the witnesses off the plantation.

This is what he told them:

“Sunday night a Negro came to me with information that the killing of Till may have happened in Sunflower County. I have looked into this. I can produce at least five witnesses at the proper time who will testify that Till was not killed in Tallahatchie County but killed in Sunflower County about three and a half miles west of Drew in the headquarters shed of the Clint Sheridan Plantation[,] which is managed by Leslie Milan, brother of J. W. Milan, one of the defendants and half brother of Roy Bryant[,] the other defendant.

“Word had been brought to me that within the past eight hours efforts have been made to clean up blood stains on the floor of this shed. I am informed that if you reporters will go with the proper authorities in the morning, you will see some stains and where efforts have been made to remove them.

“I am informed that a 1955 green Chevrolet truck with a white top was seen on the place at 6 a.m. Sunday, August 28, the last time Till was seen alive. There were four white men in the cab and three Negro men in the back. Photos of Till have been identified. He was in the middle in the back.

“There are witnesses who heard the cries of a boy from the shed. They heard blows. They noted that the cries gradually decreased until they were heard no more.

“Later a tractor was moved from the shed. The truck was driven into the shed. The truck came out with a tarpaulin spread over the back. The Negroes who went into the shed were not seen at this time and have not been seen around the plantation since.”

Jumps Gun

Porteous readily agreed to keeping the story off the papers until the next day but James Featherstone of the Jackson Daily News told Dr. Howard the he could not promise he would not print the story the next day. He said he had been called to come to Mound Bayou for a story, that he had not been told it was off the record and that he was going to print the story as quickly as he could get it in the papers.

This caused everyone in the room to almost faint because they knew what publication of the story would mean to the witnesses like Willie Reed and Mandy Bradley[,] who were at that moment still down on the plantation.

It took everyone in the room begging and pleading with Featherstone not to break the story. He finally agreed on the condition that on the following night when the witnesses were produced in Mound Bayou that no other white reporter be let in on the meeting except the three who were then there.

Dr. Howard, who I’m sure by this time realized his tactical mistake, promised that would be the case.

Scheme Exposed

The next step was to get the witnesses off the plantation and then have the white reporters tell the DA and the prosecutors that we had them and that they were all willing to talk. We broke up the meeting on this note.

But the white reporters went to the authorities either that night or the first thing the next morning because when the trial recessed the next day the prosecutors had informed the judge and the Governor of the State about the new evidence and the trial came to an abrupt recess to allow the prosecutors to talk with the witnesses.

Now during cotton picking time in Mississippi you can’t get a cotton picker to leave the plantation during the day unless a white man comes for him. If he does he is subjected to a good whipping.

Ruby Hurley knew this and knowing this she became immediately alarmed that we would not be able to get the witness[es] until that night and that since the prosecution already knew about it the defense would also find out about it and that meant that they were still on the spot.

Still with the idea of saving lives, we huddled together with Miss Hurley in Sumner’s only tavern to decide what was the next move.

Ruby said there was only one thing to do. That was to go on the plantation and warn the witnesses to leave at once and come to Mound Bayou as soon as possible. But native Mississippians pointed out the problem of that.

Meant Trouble

They said it meant trouble if any strange colored people showed up on a plantation and then some of the plantation people disappeared. Since we had to go to the plantation of the defendants they considered it double trouble.

But Ruby was insistent and it was finally agreed that Ruby and a reporter, Moses Newsome of Memphis[,] would go out on the plantation to warn the people and set up a meeting place for that night and that we would all then meet in a certain place in Cleveland, Mississippi[,] where we would talk to the witnesses and then bring them to Mound Bayou eight miles away to meet the authorities and the white reporters.

Thus shortly after high noon Ruby and Newsome disguised themselves as sharecroppers (Moses who was 130 pounds went away wearing a size 46 pair of overalls and Ruby wearing a Mother Hubbard dress and a bandana and actually looked for the moment like a sharecropper.)

This may sound fantastic but this is all true and it is the only way the state produced what few witnesses it did produce with the exception of Mose Wright.

They left, borrowed an old battered auto and went out into the plantations.

With the trial recessed we then went back to Mound Bayou. The meeting place with the witnesses was in Cleveland, Mississippi[,] and we were to be there at dark.

When darkness fell I went to the meeting place. There I met a man who is an ardent worker in the NAACP. He told me to park my car and get into his car. Then he drove me to a house which turned out to be the real meeting place.

I later learned that this is the way they do it down there. They announce one place as a site. But when you arrive there it is really not the bonafide place. If you are the right person you are taken from there to the meeting place. If you are not, no one will admit knowing what you are talking about.

Fantastic! It seems that way. But you have to live in Mississippi under the threat of its violence to learn what people like Ruby Hurley and other NAACP leaders have learned.