*New information about the Emmett Till murder case suggests the verdict may have been fixed from the start.
Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was accused by a white woman named Carolyn Bryant Donham of whistling at her inside a grocery store. Till was kidnapped and viciously beaten for the alleged act, and his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River.
Bryant’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam were charged with Till’s murder and an all-white jury acquitted them of the crime. But according to a recent NBC Chicago report, the jury’s initial vote was not unanimous.
Bryant and Milam later confessed to the killing in a paid magazine interview.
Till’s mother, Mamie Till, allowed Jet Magazine to publish pictures of his mangled body in an effort to show the world what the racist white men had done to her only child.
In an exclusive interview with NBC Chicago, Stephen Whitaker, Ph.D., explains that he has extensively researched Till’s murder and discovered that “one of the suspects’ defense attorneys, John Whitten, in his role as the county attorney for Tallahatchie, hand-picking the jury pool to ensure each person was “racist” and willing to set the white men free,” the outlet writes.
“[Whitten] assured that the list from which the jury was taken only had people he was pretty certain were totally racist,” Whitaker said. “And who would think nothing of killing an African American.”
Here’s more from the report:
There were other forces influencing the trial, Whitaker learned, including key witnesses who were kept from testifying and hidden from view by the local Tallahatchie Sheriff at that time, H.C. Strider.
Whitaker discovered these facts about the witnesses who were shielded from view from his own stepfather, N.Z. Trout, who was the head of security for the Till trial and a deputy under Sheriff Strider.
Per the report, Whitaker said he found out, “The jury voted nine to three to acquit. There were three people on the jury that voted guilty.”
The second time the jury voted, it was also not unanimous.
“On the second time, they voted 11 to one,” Whittaker said. The jury’s third and final vote was 12 to zero.
“[The jury] had an agreement among themselves not to- not to tell who voted,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker unpacks these new revelations in NBC Chicago’s latest documentary, “The Lost Story of Emmett Till: Then And Now,” which you can stream here.
Check out the clip below:
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