American Experience; The Murder of Emmett Till; Interview with John Herbers, journalist

fb pics for years well it's hard to learn about mississippi has a book called the most southern place on earth about about the delta at it at timing of about what was mississippi like well in nineteen fifty five that the data via told from mississippi was in a state of great tension that he ever for the spring quarter rule that screws had to be the segregated across the south the un deep in the delta region which is a cotton ball in place with it which has the predominant no more of afro americans was a particularly

tense because of course there was no the afro americans have no authority whites into doing everything they could to prevent these allegations killed and injured or even afro americans from attaining rights like voting rights and rights to detect eating lunch counters in and all that kind of things it was just us the state and the state of great anxiety the white population mississippi in nineteen fifty five was absolutely torn by fear that the there would be they would be forced to do what they swore they would never do which was to give the afro americans equal rights it was just a place of extreme tension throughout the whole year even though they're not been any how to write ad outright move move move abaya i mean any talk any strong move on monday afro americans

certainly for him at that time it was a white suv fearful at us ports the idea for the forced brown versus board tacked was mississippi's reaction that doesn't act of congress border absolutely one hundred percent defines it clear that didn't although the supreme court declared segregation unconstitutional and they have declared that the supreme court why not me it was not authorized to do that and they there were columns written to the effect that if there isn't if there's bloodshed the blunt rubio style white marble steps of the supreme court a great way to move beyond steps mr chason and now the revised

that's what the prices were from for me moscow is why you know why i was so scared change as it was was the solution well that was before the invention of the year the cotton pickers and the white landowners in the delta were dependent on the afro americans to pick cotton and they want that they want to keep in the air but they want to keep them in a subjugated this situation i didn't want to continue as many here don't already fully into detroit in new york i mean the current chicago and places like that so they are their only their only hope is they saw it was to keep the afro american subjugated just got home state and he gives me a pro reform of our lights that my question will be their own it seems to me that that that the delta was

a special place in one the ways where you just were down about a month ago while think that they hit me and you know that was the factors the usa a business selling business you know and talk honestly separate styles just like that it's almost people in this country and you hadn't gone to the doctor will go to the doctor what was that delta like this was like in nineteen fifty five in nineteen fifty five how the mississippi delta was like a loser like a region into itself even within mississippi or in north east mississippi hill country and hardscrabble white farmers trying to make a living in the delta you have plantation economy and the landowners with the growing cotton his face is a good and using you know having to be towed be independent on on black labor to have to get it done

and so it was it was in all their mores and everything in the delta where were different if you have people like eudora welty and william former salon of their literature showed a point that out and it was just at wit's end within the south it was it was unique within mississippi you hear me that's the difference between us and mississippi and those big two really different places to our young man mississippi in chicago at the time worked hard at different places in the first place in mississippi does not have any to speak of urban development us all ruined the rules vote was at that time white vote to censor things chicago question allison often part of people of all different kinds and people won't fly into chicago to get away from places like mississippi and it

was just you could be a different culture than that on then chicago in the city and cheer and it killed did not was not aware of those sharp differences when he went down there because until the horses came you still have something so much and zach moore and different story but what is this and as these southern cautions though the culture on what was a place of white women in this country well at the end of the place of law that was the place that white women in the culture of mississippi this time was one of them where they thought they had to protect white women at all cost from having any kind of relations the most situations or otherwise with black hair i was a black man and he knows what to do with the legends occurred

where the only so great part of the lynchings that have occurred across the south at the time we're wearing a black person had been accused of raping or heck even having a martyr a sexual relationship with a white woman and we just wanted that was sort of the one of the tower sacred have to wear black who is that they're they can do i think that they can have any kind of relationship with white women it seems that that you know we have we found this moment at the citizens' councils me or extolling segregation desegregation but on the flipside of segregation that was all for you know even even as a musician that to us now that was that was also the idea of a lynching occurred in forest nose is this

beautiful record and forth about the retro will lead to one well i'm not cause i'm not a student of the year are all of that aspect of the south but i do know that in the south at the time the the deep the threat of the big fear on the part of whites weren't having their white women subjected to any kind of intimate the attention from a black man that was something about that that just a debt deadline nothing out there you know you cover the south you're from denver seal and singer ever have to go to two buildings in the aftermath that we know by the time i came along by the time i came along the legions had been pretty much pro pretty much a

stamped out they were they did it continues we know to greedy people in mississippi and and so forth but i had never i never witnessed one of course it was always don't you do a dark night even in some small town and it was just not anything that i would have any kind of access to now to find out about him later and try to find the information in writing that kind of thing for the back to kind of the broader support an end in nineteen fifty four fifty five because it seemed it seems that in some ways in the us know on the general us is a pivotal time war two was over and black soldiers had come home to some of mexico's a couple with a different view of the world in brown vs board of their hands and fifty four but the war wasn't was the us have

slowly starting to change and fifty four fifty five and it doesn't give me talk to me about that from the vantage point of mississippi you know any idea the mississippi at the time of the nineteen fifty five the trial was its way back in the far back from the rest of the country things like civil rights and things like human rights and things like poverty there was just a whole different cause she was almost like being back in that slavery days in the fact that they're well there were two societies they had really one black and one white and they did not damning all except for doing here for the labor that forever americans brought to the region other mississippi was just i had not know that had reached down there because

most of the communities of public officials all were very much geared to be a lawyer and they were very much geared to i'm and maintaining video the status quo when the status quo is just what it had been since reconstruction days absolute segregation no civil rights for of afro americans is that how you first hear of the internet i was running a small bureau in jackson for the united press and don't we have heard through our sources are who gave us reports from the uk from the delta unhappy a fourteen year old black boy had been ruined somehow got himself crossed up with eo a white woman and the story in it and here in tallahassee filkins and

he really did he was he was it was missing and that was suspicious about what might've happened and the authorities were supposed to be investigating that was several days before his body was found and i went up there before the trial that they had they had begun indictment and set the trial date and i went up there before to to talk around and see what you get the idea of the year and the atmosphere to come what was so what will wipe peoples and what will by people say and earn and as soon as there's some time doing that before the prosperity and you would you like to know when a tiny yellow is in alaska polls close there

in the conclusion of that he came to is almost four total because you talk to white people they would say well you know they would use crude jokes about to the effect about they would say things like oh isn't that just like a nigger to try to swim across a missed the taliban she really was a good standard taylor and his neck and you make references to his maturity as a man rather than as a boy i asked if that would justify it what happened in that new immediate that time to this day there's not going to be any conviction appear they would it probably would be a condition i think your body else knew that to you you can't want to get get to the trial along was last year

at the app that tried for actually just putting a physical atmosphere was a house with who was a former football field because in most people you know and they don't trust what like beer they're the trial there was it was almost to the courtroom and the same was almost unbelievable it was hot you sweat a courtroom was jam packed with locals rallied and with reporters from all the country an idea the sheriff was acting like this on the show is always acted that they keep in their black segregated from fights and been very hard and very bossy about it he was under orders from the judge to be judicious piper you could hardly tell me that it was a very weird kind of hissing and if there had been a character taking it as it happened with all the session this nelson the nuts melt with the sounds in the year it would make a

wonderful movie it is unlivable for was that no one in this is that why was that it was such a big case what went well for the potential till case so there was a certificate the emmett till case was a big case because it's from a news point that from a news point of reporters and editors and so forth it had all the elements of it had sex it had a murder in chemistry and it was oh it was totally be the sex angle at that time his sex was not discussed openly like it is that today a budget that animated the big question of course is the recess out of the south and the big case because this was a case and showed how injustice was

perpetrated in the south and how usually that was not proud of these connotations or they were just set up this is this was a case where the whole country can look in and see what was going on in there the deep south is the state mr coogan as a nose is going to conjugate of what the atmosphere of the trial in the park you are in the atmosphere to trial was surreal it was a very small courtroom for the number of people who have packed into it was on the second floor and it was very hot humid and it was packed with with the local people leo and he does that the sheriff was her conduct and people ran been very dictatorial about it was very everything was very segregated

audience for american reporters had to say that a lot of cells and that they will be in they were moving people around and it was always like has been seen at la out and nae nae so the movie of that period the only wars it was absolutely unbelievable to make a wonderful movie if it will show a man excellent yes it was such a vacate the emmett till trial was such a big case from the news point of view which are because it had all the elements that the reporters and editors look for and had murdered and had sex and head to it if it head the mystery because we didn't really know all the facts of the case and above but basically it was a big story because this was

the first opportunity that the nation as a whole and actually the world and have a look in on the dignity people based at justice in the deep deep south early decision leon and the nation's looking at the soprano the president has pressed came from all over and what you want to get from here so that the president who was there at the trip i matured from the press came from my home to many many places they came from what i was told and some foreign reporters were there are other big newspapers ahead did wrong i remember one case the international new servicer and the man who had covered the lindbergh kidnapping and he was

described as the va as the world's best raw reporter all the resources of the media had been thrown into this into this one case because it had all the elements that people were interested in at the time and you know i don't know how we all manage to jam into that courtroom the way we did for the specially it but he was very yeah he was a very interesting situation yeah the heck you're listenin stories all the world and so those are those interests be on and stay somewhere well this was a very own strange situation i went to the summer to cover the trial myself today about myself which it was an associated press for example head to head three reporters here i was the only one there and the crowd was on the second

floor i had a telephone to get out on the first floor so i returned there was a new development in the trial and raised and stage but the telephone call atlanta with my information all the time the local whites were standing around listening to me then run back to be attuned to the table upstairs get to get the started to get ketchup on what was going on that had this happened for a whole week and it was a very odd and we got it was so popular the trial was that we got choir is all the time from as far away as paris in japan germany seen in eighty years asking questions that ash copy it probably not told what they say somewhere else he was almost like a lot it was almost like a major top of that today except of course your denial of television so you've

got these chairs the total about the media to the inquiries for stories that you catalog the work you just can't imagine from japan you allow an hour when i would fall into an oil well after i would get personally identifying say look we got to korea from and today we got a career from paris along lamont says that the associated press has a report that something about and to a smaller force of about one of the witnesses a fact that we have not put in a copy and then they would in a bus and how pleased that moment i was supposed to answer that sometimes i can answer sometimes i could and i'm sure the theaters at prescott the same thing from all over and of course they live big named reporters they're covering for their own most newspapers there was of course we had some limited broadcast and

television coverage and the un convoys is a reporter for the star reporters was a report from the north in other places but this was their first exposure to that to the deep south owned how they react to no that that courtroom scene that you describe those white folks in the white house standing around outside know how close a reporter's reaction to this will take for example marc antony is a very well known well known columnist and reporter for years and years was there and he was just he just couldn't believe the same because it was so unlike anything that he was used to and he wrote about and graphically oh the same way were young reporter for the nation at the time they had the same reaction and they were really i think they knew what they were in for when they came

down but they didn't know it would be than the quite that dramatic and who is talking in in general terms about the poorest nation you didn't know any of them i mean these guys were really well as the olympics will be the reaction from supporters came from all over the deep south you know core was coursing well that the reaction of reportage from out of the south was one of just absolute amazement and they knew that they weren't strange things going on and in places like summer and surrounded but they did not know in the choir like that they were really surprised at the and what they found at the same time of course they wrote about it with great relish because it was a good story from a journalistic point of view as it's

been because he said that they were in the atmosphere you know that there was also this this atmosphere that we've seen depictions of a bill on the via the local white people getting signed no i want you to tell us on the job just what was their attitude i'm sorry i had an internet with that this is again he's on to joke about the kind of jobs that were circulating i think that we need to says wanted to do when the atmosphere among local whites and jokes the atmosphere among whites and telling it she can he

and other us or other holes around an air was one of an absolute i don't know how exactly have a phrase in egypt was absolute scorn it the fact that these men were being there put on trial for their lives they didn't believe that the dead and the circumstances that they knew that the only and that the loan that should've ever been arrested and prosecuted and they was it was company and they're sad disbelief vote or the cynicism i was a who is usually couched in no things like a very crude jokes for example one of them was why they're just like a meager two or swim across a tallahassee religion santa ran his neck and they would make a kind of observation was to say well this boy so called war was really not a boy he is at his victory was beyond that in there with her descriptions that were not were not very

polite i don't know no one has the best rides fresh air strike was nine world's fair shot at was the year a big fat plain talking book obscene talk and cheerfully to the charity which that violence or you could head and that he was he is his actions at the trial were more i think he was not so much to say just as a what was going on would be sure that his courtroom was tolling say today there was a place for blacks news place for whites and that was not done in a supposedly mixture in this even came to work as far as i can remember it even came to the extent of her of the same again and learn some of the like witnesses like it does is still unlike the commission dated come down from detroit to observe and then their

way city officials sly was in was in charge of the investigation of looking for people and i think for an investigation i think he had actually not fond of the time i caught up with it that i couldn't tell too much about what was that what he had done it personally and is a god i think that he was on instructions from some of the you know there were people in the delta who who work educated in who were not you know not share all of these terrible believes that there was a common golden and i think he had been under some amount of pressure for them to at least find out as much as he could about exactly what happened at it in lhasa prosecutors took over they were really in charge and not him mr o

know minnesota voters of the night i hear myself when no one was accused there was that but he was involved and hiring witnesses the journey that i had heard that but i was eight at the time i was i was really was a rumor and i didn't have any way of a lot of proven it and i don't know where they want us to learn a lot but i should i don't protesting flow of course we wanted to observe the trial and to testify during to remember how she was treated as she was traditionally treated in mississippi and summer at a time when it is when is it still came down the head of the dia momentum and already begun to build and then the trial and i don't remember it precisely when she came down she was treated with all with

contempt by most people now maybe they just thought that she was coming down and put on a show and it was i don't really care but they just use the elder in high containment i remember that was the general feeling that many in a meeting and all the people did that it was the white people in the most good intentions so why because she was the mother of emmett till and she was by that says oh so simplistic answer but that she was not think she was that was an innocent sympathetic figure because a lot of that media people and their victory here though the pro segregation papers and all had written about her as being as coming down there to eat to put on a show and not too much not to seek justice that's what they thought that she was the state to have to enter the circus

what happens among that that that gets at that basic there was a reaction in sumter county says the media males and yet and yet the they were very upsetting to me the idea of the reaction though in summer to the autonomy attention was won over our own hostility that the storyline was among the people there was that this was just another way that northern newspapers in northern intrusive form as heroin picking on the south and this again i'm an opportunity and that's why they were there they were not to seek justice of any kind that was the year the general attitude around some what wasn't really came and here's the beading i

remembered vaguely his testimony but i didn't it didn't register too strong with me at the time because it didn't consider that there that was moses' right had given such a strong statement that an update on that statin there is a loose a testimony was being unhelpful but he was not considered a major wins those rights testimony as the site so that it would you know moses isn't it was that so important well mose wright was a year but mose wright is a chief witness for the prosecution in the trial was extremely important because he gave us a year i'll be overly friendly condescending but proper black article figure in the south and he was he was so

convincing and he he was humble he was polite he did not in any way appear to be invited to be radical he was up barron says simply doing what he thought was telling the truth when he thought was right in his when he shook his finger at the defendants and said it was shaking finger at him and say and dark days is just i was so convincing than any jury could not have been couldn't even encourage rape the us who testified in the us suddenly you know you have to really set the scene now for us to you to realize that wasn't ready for that more than one well it certainly was in particularly most because he had to leave the year the state later on for his own safety he probably knew that you have to

steal he did and it was extremely rare at any one has come forward to testify well for the prosecution and really put himself under a n n n n in jeopardy it is many of the people are black well in the immunity of probably for any black had to testify for the prosecution automatically record a great deal of bravery moses writer particularly was brave to have come forward and testified as he did with at any kind of equivocation and all about having seen what he did and at that time to eat he was put into merely put himself on

jeopardy because he had to be the state later for his own life and that's a vicious way was that these were the first to me the first real heroes of the civil rights movement because they get it under extreme pressure no matter the sales they did it with grace the end that the defendant's learning that the prosecution wanted but prosecution wednesday with grace went even into the disgraced they did it with and the way that the same kind of grace that you heard later from i'm from from martin luther king under threat under john lewis under threat those kind of people who when they did get acts of bravery they did it without any kind of show of fear or in a pen show of

weakness they did it just plain out straight ahead just one of four witnesses that although the people do something there is an effort by the prosecutors who had been urged on by a black leaders to find more witnesses and yes i was about to a small extent it out we knew that they were looking for witnesses and that the hat the prosecutor was leading the effort to find him and after the trial was over and even we would go out and talk to him at the motel to see if any progress had been made in fighting those witnesses and they define self but they are i think they could've they didn't find nearly as many as they as they should've had

butted in that by that time to do that that was cast the only juror was going to make it clear the defendants anyway and isn't offering yes we do and set the scene well they came in yeah i knew and i suppose most everybody remembers her and knew that it would be not guilty because the jury heads and showed as far as we can tell no respect whatsoever for the year love for the year you had for the prosecution witnesses and folio but particularly for a flu kills a mother and so when

he came in and he was just almost delivered so automatically and so quickly and this story was i don't know whether it was true and i think it was that they knew what they were doing when they went into the jury room but they do have a certain amount of time elapsed before they gave their verdict just gotten to be more credible and it was just a faulty anybody who was there to say just as it was just a really very crushing blow for whites who requested not alone convicted in the first place it was a lawyer freedom and there was a lot of congratulation of the defendants and so forth you said that you decided that the jury was not respectful of time that feels more than what you mean you know it i don't have any and the killer's mother

oh i can say is it on there is that our watch the faces of the jurors when she came into the courtroom and dad and they just that i don't know what they say to each other but it sounded like they were just saying something in contempt of her that was not feeling at the time that was it you know couldn't prove what they said that the looks on their faces kind of deal that you know they were the jury was people that appears of the defendants i mean they were working class people most of them local whites who won there so we're doing some farmers who you had some of the wealth that they were mostly a low calorie local tolling being out with the sas feeling of the necessity to prove preserve segregation and that keeping blacks it

was a reaction to and you only say what i thought that the jury to me seemed contemptuous of emmett till smaller because whenever she would be brought into the courtroom or whenever they looked over at her seated of where she was and they had this what i thought was kind of a look of contempt or jeering kind of an added attitude toward it taught her and i don't know what they say to each of the time but i just felt like that they had to hold her in contempt it's been oh well i think that to keep telling the story and i thought was fascinating was the second the verge of going out across the street or something like that that the chinese store still there

was a narrative there was a verdict on tv and some adversity so i i went after the trial was or how about this is i could have to have in my story that telephone and june to where we've improved visual input on the ward and i saw this little chinese are really went in there to get a beer and was told exhausted ideas on some kind of relief and i was too emotionally and physically totally exhausted and i saw them on the television screen was a spy was the year story of the verdict they had he was the fell on the subway it was that it was someone reading the news from new york or wherever but they have gotten the word about it and of course i was surprised because i did or less television was quite get their service

gave a quite big festive quite interested in her story is that so this is really about what was to come but then i thought that was a very important signal that they need that appears on television on right after the trial was a very important signal of what was to come because subsequently the networks are following the lead printed newspapers came in grain grows into the south and reported all of the season the trustees and so forth that one on it was one thing to turn around a couple laws so russia was a word that the civil rights movement was looking for the time and that was just sort of the beginning of all that it was significant steve inskeep host mr eilert testify for the

defense and this is that the community's in charge of collecting evidence for the prosecution to testify so that says so i'm certainly not surprised that i don't remember that for trump they let alone the seven the question i guess is going to be on the immediate effect what was the larger effect of the emmett till trying to appease why is it important ones come in the legacy of the emmett till trial was extremely important because at the time it really got northern whites and liberals and

an afro americans involved i deeply nbc at a civil rights movement it helped organize it didn't have so much immediate effect in mississippi itself because of blacks say that i was so subjugated that they were they took a wall a few years after that when they really that they are under then there were a cpa and rubber noses and other people like that really given thought but it really it's a big effect was on the outside attorney attention of the nation but two of the south and the same way that although probably more so an intimate dumbing school boycott would be the little rock school desegregation case but all three but particularly in the telecom was important for that because he was a graphic on a thing that people could understand so easily for one thing to ourselves and he was a boycott started just about a hundred days after the emmett till

trial did it all and you know the the montgomery boycott was trains this resistance twenty thousand war was in some ways very emotional content to a lady was elation choose between my family and an immigrant i would say and they lived there and there was a relationship between the emmett till trial in the family bus boycott to this effect at the rosa parks was a black woman who was involved in the movement in the yemeni country and i i don't i mean i don't know that she ever directly related her commitment to add to that what i've served in that it reinforces opinions and made her claim her seat on the bus and that the mood more so then she would have done if that immature kind of occurred because they're just third intifada all the people in the end only cpr when she was involved with that and it was people have been working

both inside north and the south for the civil rights movement i dearly a fifth vote fifteen in late fifties needed something to give the emperor's you suddenly get them farther people in indiana and i think the image of hounded the two largest and although we back in mississippi didn't realize at the time that this was happening so much particularly on this issue of the day it's b good things that happened was that the jet magazine published the photos of the body human that india and then like that it was like a magazine and picked up the pictures and post them so it didn't you know some patients still alive jon stewart as the report is down there in

mississippi but you talk to people particularly effect of those photos on the country i think the effect of the photos of emma tales body which is mother had insisted to be shown i have a large effect because it was just awful and there was some discussion that they you know this was not a good taste not to run this kind of the picture but in fact anyone who looked at those pictures and hadn't been known that emmett till had to have been murdered in the moment when it was it had an emotional effect of widespread emotion this is the one and i was there most of what was the most of the day i think that people all of the country when they sell pictures of this oil on

his coffin and in the end the body in the middle of the state that it was it brought home to them it was kind of like the later on of the last couple three years they worked the pages and on display in new york of reaching speeds of image and so anybody looking at those pictures has to have just had a feeling of great revulsion and i think the pages caused a great deal of revulsion know a lot of people at the time