Milam, he left Mississippi. At first, he moved to St. Louis, where he had lived a few years earlier, but then moved to Dayton, Ohio, in He did not surface publicly until July when historians David and Linda Beito found him and interviewed him over the telephone. For years he made a living in Dayton as a junkman. He later appeared in Untold Story and on a 60 Minutes segment about the case, where he denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, the Till murder.
He died in Dayton in October Since , his stepson Johnny B. Thomas has been mayor of the village of Glendora, Mississippi, former home to both Loggins and J. District Attorney Gerald Chatham, whose impassioned closing arguments in the case captivated everyone present, passed away only one year after his attempt to convict the two half-brothers. Because of notoriety in the Till case, the death of this otherwise unknown country lawyer was noted in the New York Times.
Ill health had forced his retirement in January He suffered not only from high blood pressure but from nose bleeds so severe that he was often admitted to the hospital, where doctors had to pack his head in ice to stop them. Chatham returned to private practice in Hernando, Mississippi, but on Oct. Hamilton Caldwell, the elected attorney for Tallahatchie County who served on the prosecution team, lived for seven years after the trial.
He was out of office and serving as vice president of the Bank of Charleston when he drowned in Enid Lake on Sept. He had been fishing alone in his boat and for reasons unknown, fell overboard as he headed back to shore.
He was He rarely talked about the case. On Dec. Yet privately, he was masking unbearable pain and went home later that morning and shot himself. The five defense attorneys who represented Milam and Bryant remained in Sumner. Sidney Carlton, former president of the Mississippi State Bar Association, died first in at age 50 after suffering a heart attack. Eighty-year-old Jesse J. Breland, the oldest member of the team, died one year later at Washington County General Hospital in Greenville after a long illness.
Kellum said this during a new era, however, and he noted with pride that blacks then served on juries, and that more were practicing law. Kellum, a self-taught lawyer who never attended college, passed the state bar exam in and practiced law until his death in July But they told me they did not [commit the murder].
They told the other lawyers that they did not. John Whitten also practiced law until the end of his life. Betty Pearson, a Sumner resident angered by the acquittal, refused to speak to Whitten for over six months after the trial.
The firm continues to this day, still housed in the same office where Milam and Bryant talked to reporter William Bradford Huie. The last surviving member of the defense team was Harvey Henderson, who continued to practice law, albeit part time, up until his death in October He was active in his local community, was a lifelong member of the Sumner Rotary Club and had also served as its president. He refused all requests for interviews about the Till case.
In , a respiratory condition sent him to the hospital, followed by several months of treatment for tuberculosis at the Mississippi State Sanatorium in Simpson County. He died there in December Divorced and without children, at his death, he was survived only by his mother and a brother. The two sheriffs in the case remained active in the years after the kidnapping and murder, although each was completing his term at the time.
Former Leflore County Sheriff George Smith, who arrested Milam and Bryant on kidnapping charges, wanted to forget all about his role by the time a reporter asked him about it two years later. Smith later served a second term as sheriff from until This time, he succeeded his former deputy, John Ed Cothran, who had helped with the kidnapping investigation and served as a witness for the prosecution.
Smith, an avid outdoorsman, was a member of the Parker-Gary Hunting Club and was planning a busy season when he died unexpectedly in at the age of Former Tallahatchie sheriff Henry Clarence Strider, who aided the defense at the trial and claimed the body retrieved from the river was not that of Emmett Till, planned to run for the office again in after sitting out the required minimum of one term, but he changed his mind at the urging of his wife after he barely escaped an assassination attempt in While he sat in his car outside of a store in the town of Cowart, someone fired a shot at his head, missing him, but striking the metal piece between the window and windshield.
Strider also maintained that the governor of Illinois refused to extradite the mysterious gunman back to Mississippi for trial, thus the entire matter was dropped. Still fearing for his life in , Strider declined to run for his former job yet again. In February of that year, state officials tried to keep black student James Meredith from registering at Old Miss, and the defiance of the governor, Ross Barnett, made national news. Strider, ever the segregationist, announced during the conflict that supervisors and game wardens were ready to aid Ole Miss in preserving its white-only student body should they be needed.
In February , Strider won a special election to the state Senate, where he represented Grenada, Yalobusha and Tallahatchie counties for the next five years. In addition to his role with the Game and Fish Commission, he was a member of the Public Property, Transportation, and Water and Irrigation committees, and chairman of the Penitentiaries Committee. In July , Strider admitted on the floor of the state Senate that he had paid for votes during his campaign for Tallahatchie County sheriff.
He disclosed this as the Senate debated a bill that provided for absentee voting for teachers and students. Although he is remembered for regularly insulting the black press in the hot, crowded courtroom in Sumner, his election to the Senate after the Voting Rights Act of forced him to deal with a black constituency who finally had the power of the ballot.
Yet Strider would have been happy to rid the Delta of its black citizens. In February , he co-sponsored a bill to relocate Mississippi blacks to other states, as a new farm bill was making it harder for laborers to earn a living.
A proposed relocation commission would seek federal funds for the removal of those who wanted to go. Robert Crook of Ruleville. Nothing ever came of the proposal, however. Like Sheriff Smith, Strider was a hunter. John Bell Williams flew to Clarksdale to attend the funeral. A year after the murder trial, co-defendant J. Milam was living on a farm between Ruleville and Cleveland. It, too, appeared in Look magazine. Few had pity on them, even those who had earlier been supportive.
Milam owned no land and could not get his former backers to rent to him. Blacks would no longer work for Milam, and he was forced to pay higher wages to whites for the same work. For three years after the trial, Milam held several menial plantation jobs. The black Pittsburgh Courier picked up on the story, also. The director of the Washington County welfare department would not confirm or deny the Post report, but Milam adamantly declared it false.
The Milams later moved to Orange, Texas, but returned to Greenville after only a few years. They would make their home at Purcell St.
Milam would have a few run-ins with the law while living in Greenville. By the time the Milams returned to Mississippi a decade after the Till trial, the outrage over the murder had subsided, and they were able to live quietly, for the most part. Milam eventually found work as a heavy equipment operator but that ended due to declining health. He and his wife Juanita were rumored to have divorced at some point, but this was not true. Because J. Her depression had not been a part of her life prior to the notorious lynching that thrust her family into the spotlight.
Despite her personal suffering, she was generous with her family and friends and managed to maintain many of her life-long interests. They even alluded to Carolyn as "Roy Bryant's most attractive wife" and a "crossroads Marilyn Monroe. During the trial, the families arrived with their sons dressed in their Sunday best. Roy and J. Many whites in the surrounding counties showed up to watch the show. They brought their children, picnic baskets and ice cream cones. Meanwhile, African American spectators were relegated to the back and looked on in fear.
Carolyn testified under oath, but outside the presence of the jury, that Emmett said "ugly remarks" to her before whistling. Two of their defense attorneys helped facilitate the interview that was published in Look magazine in January After the town's show of support at the trial, the men talked freely about how they killed the young teen from Chicago.
But soon after the article came out, both men were ostracized. Ostracism Blacks stopped frequenting groceries owned by both the Bryant and Milam families. The stores soon went out of business. Unable to find work, Roy took his family to East Texas and attended welding school.
His half-brother J. Years later, both men would return to Mississippi. A Revealing Interview John Whitten, one of their defense attorneys, told National Public Radio's Soundprint program in a interview that he later regretted defending the case. Roy Bryant was also interviewed for the same Soundprint program. Legally blind and plagued with back trouble, he refused to talk about the case. Even though he was protected by double jeopardy, he still feared he would have to pay for his crime before he died.
And now they want to get me, well, to hell with them. I'm not gon' talk about it. Can't ever tell what they might do nowadays, they might change the Constitution. By the time the Milams returned to Mississippi a decade after the Till trial, the outrage over the murder had subsided, and they were able to live quietly, for the most part. At some point in the s, Juanita began working as a hairdresser at the Greenville Beauty Salon. In , Juanita served as president of the local affiliate of the Mississippi Hairdressers and Cosmetologists Association.
Clearly, Juanita felt at ease in her local community. Like Till's mother and later, Carolyn Bryant, Juanita Milam experienced the death of a son, when in her eldest, Bill, died in Greenville at age She is survived by her son Harvey, a sister, a brother, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Attempts to contact two of her grandchildren were unsuccessful. Juanita's only known public statements about the Till case following the trial occurred when the FBI came knocking after the federal government reopened the case in During the trial, Carolyn Bryant said Juanita had been in the Bryant's apartment behind the store the night Emmett Till came in, where she was babysitting the Bryant and Milam children. When asked about this, Juanita denied being there.
Juanita accused Carolyn of fabricating the entire story. She thought this wild story would make Roy take care of the store instead of leavin' her with the kids and the store. That night at the store, however, Carolyn went to a car that she said belonged to Juanita, to get a gun. The Bryants didn't own a car; the Milams did. If Juanita was not there, who was? Students of the Till case remember seeing Juanita stand by her man during the trial and after the jury read the verdict.
More than one photographer in Sumner captured her smiles as her husband was set free. That, of course, only tells part of her story. Whether or not the 25 years she lived with J. Devery Anderson, an award-winning book editor who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, is writing a book on the Emmett Till murder and speaks across the nation about his research on the case. Visit his website at emmetttillmurder. Facebook Twitter Email. Widow of Emmett Till killer dies quietly, notoriously.
Devery Anderson The Jackson, Miss. Share your feedback to help improve our site!
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