? ? ?
If any of her children inherited Eula Lee’s fiery temperament, it was the outsized middle child among the first set of five Milam children. He was the ruling body and spirit among all of them. “J. W. Milam was so domineering and so had to be in control all the time,” according to Carolyn. Six feet two inches and more than 230 pounds, an extrovert and a decorated war hero, he had black hair around the edges of his massive bald head. “Big,” they called him, because he took up a lot of space, literally and figuratively.22
Born in 1919 in Tallahatchie County, John William Milam attended school through the tenth grade. He served in the U.S. Army, 2nd Armored Division, from 1941 until the spring of 1946.23 During the war he fought in Germany, often in house-to-house, hand-to-hand combat, and won a battlefield commission to lieutenant, a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and several other medals.24 “I do remember seeing J.W. with his shirt off one time, and he had some deep holes in his back, and when I asked Juanita about it, she said that’s where the shrapnel hit him when he was injured in service,” Carolyn recalled. His mother bragged, “He started as a private and got his commission the hard way.” The journalist William Bradford Huie described Milam as “an expert platoon leader, expert street fighter, expert in night patrol, expert with a [Thompson machine gun], expert with every device for close-range killing.”25 His favorite weapon, however, was the army .45-caliber pistol. “I can tell you how good he was with that old pistol,” his son boasted to FBI agents years later. “I seen him shoot bumble bees out of the air with it.”26
J. J. Breland, a local attorney, regarded J.W. as a kind of brutal necessity for the social order of white supremacy. “He comes from a big, mean, overbearing family,” Breland said bluntly. “Got a chip on his shoulder. That’s how he got that battlefield promotion in Europe; he likes to kill folks. But, hell, we’ve got to have our Milams to fight our wars and keep the niggahs in line.” One of four lawyers who would defend Milam and Bryant, Breland told Huie to let the country know that integration was out of the question in Mississippi. “The whites own all the property in Tallahatchie County. We don’t need the niggers no more.”27 Of course this was hardly the case for the Bryants and Milams, who relied almost entirely on African Americans for their livelihood. Nor would they likely have agreed with Breland, despite their relative poverty, about their social position among white Mississippians.
Early in her marriage Carolyn clashed with J.W. on at least one occasion. “One thing that happened upset me pretty badly, and J.W. and I had a few words about it.” The memory was sharp even sixty years later. “I said, ‘I’ve got to figure out where to vote.’ He says, ‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that—I’ve already voted for you.’ My first time to vote, and he voted for me.” Her resentment still sounded fresh. “That’s what he told me: ‘You can’t go back and vote, I’ve already voted for you.’ I told him, ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again.’ I’d been waiting all that time to vote and didn’t get to.”
If Roy objected to his half-brother voting for his wife, Carolyn did not remember it. J.W., fourteen years his senior, seemed to have a hold on Roy. When other people asked why they had different last names or referred to them as “half-brothers,” Roy would say, “We don’t consider us half-brothers. We’re brothers.” When Big Boy Bryant left the family, Big Milam took over the paternal role, especially for Roy.28 The younger man certainly looked up to and took his cues from his hefty older sibling.
J.W. lived in the small community of Glendora, where he owned a store, a gas station, and a small house. He also owned a trucking business and an agricultural service firm; he had bought several large trucks and could repair and operate heavy farm machinery. When he had a long haul to make from Texas or Louisiana, he would often let Roy handle it.29 He hired local African Americans to grade and repair driveways and gravel roads and take care of his trucks. They would also “wash his pickup and Juanita’s car and stuff like that,” his sister-in-law remembered. “Clean up, sweep out the store, take out the trash.” Huie wrote, “Those who know him say he can handle Negroes better than anybody in the county.” Milam himself agreed with the assessment, only adding the lie, “I ain’t never hurt a nigger in my life.”30 Decades later Carolyn said of her brother-in-law, encompassing more than she meant and perhaps even knew, “He seemed to have a good relationship with them, and I think they were probably afraid of him too.”
6
THE INCIDENT
On Wednesday evening, August 24, 1955, Reverend Moses Wright held services at the East Money Church of God in Christ. His three sons, Wheeler Parker, and Emmett Till had picked cotton throughout the morning and part of the afternoon. Summer was coming to an end, and soon enough they’d be parted for at least a school year. So Wright did not force the boys to attend church; instead he loaned them his 1941 Ford, instructing them to go no farther than the nearby country store because Maurice, who was driving, had no license. Six boys and one girl made the drive. The oldest was Thelton “Pete” Parker, nineteen, who lived nearby, as did Ruthie Mae Crawford, who was eighteen, and her brother Roosevelt Crawford, fifteen. The two youngest were Simeon, twelve, and Emmett, fourteen. Wheeler and Maurice were sixteen. After Maurice dropped his parents off at the church, the group disregarded his father’s imperative and drove to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money, only three miles away.1