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Thread ID: 18691 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-06-17
2005-06-17 01:42 | User Profile
The ""Murder"" of Emmett Till The 49-year-old story of the crime and how it came to be told. By Randy Sparkman
Breland, then 67, was a Princeton graduate and a leader in the Mississippi Citizens Council, a Main Street version of the Ku Klux Klan formed in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. Breland had originally been reluctant to take on Milam and Bryant's defense. But he came to see the prosecution as an affront against Mississippi, another assault like Black Monday, as the day of the Brown ruling on desegregation was known across the South. By agreeing to Huie's interview request, Breland was putting the nation on notice: The ruling class in Mississippi intended to see Brown repealed and was willing to use poor whites like Milam and Bryant to fight a war to that end. Breland agreed to Huie's terms. "They're peckerwoods," he said of Milam and Bryant, according to accounts of the conversation in Huie's private correspondence. "But, hell, we've got to have our Milams to fight our wars and keep our niggahs in line ââ¬Â¦ there ain't gonna be no integration ââ¬Â¦ there ain't gonna be no nigger votin'. And the sooner everybody in this country realizes it the better. If any more pressure is put on us, the Tallahatchie won't hold all the niggers that'll be thrown into it." Huie's "Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi" was published in January 1956. The article told the story of Till's murder from Milam and Bryant's point of viewââ¬âa brutal tale of a beating that ended on the bank of the Tallahatchie River with a gun shot to the side of the head. The men portrayed Till as a sexually precocious youth who boasted of "having white women." Milam gave voice to the backed-in-a-corner rage of Southern white resistance. "What else could we do?" he said. "I like niggersââ¬âin their placeââ¬âI know how to work 'em. But ââ¬Â¦ 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. ââ¬Â¦ 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 youââ¬âjust so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.' "
[url]http://slate.msn.com/id/2120788/[/url]
2005-06-17 15:59 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-4584.html]Old OD thread[/URL]
The Look Magazine account:
[url]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_look_confession.html[/url]
Till's father raped and murdered Italian civilians and was executed by the Army. Emmett "Bobo" Till sexually assaulted a woman and was executed by her husband.