When they arrived they gathered in front of the store; they’d come for candy and drinks but were in no hurry. “I noticed a group of young people congregating on the porch,” Carolyn Bryant recalled. “It was not unusual for people to be on the porch as there were many checker games played by the locals outside our window.” “Locals” was a courtesy used decades after these events. At the time, in polite company, at least, they were called “Negroes,” and the store survived because they gathered on that porch “almost daily.”2
As they talked that day it is possible that Emmett claimed he attended school with white girls and even claimed he had dated some of them. One cousin recalled that Emmett had a picture of a white girl in his wallet and showed it to the others, bragging that it was his girlfriend. Mamie Bradley later wrote that Emmett’s wallet had come with a picture of the movie star Hedy Lamarr in it, although she may have been trying to defend her son’s reputation against any imputation that he had a sexual interest in white girls, which would have undermined public perception of his innocence.3 None of the witnesses interviewed soon after the incident mentioned either a photograph or any braggadocio from Emmett, so these may be embroidered tales. There is some agreement among the witnesses that an unidentified boy, not one of those who came with the group, suggested that Emmett go inside the store to at least look at Carolyn Bryant. Wheeler, for instance, told a reporter, “One of the other boys told Emmett there was a pretty lady in the store and that he should go in and see her.”4 Wheeler went in first, and Emmett was not far behind, intending to buy bubblegum. Wheeler made his purchase quickly and left, leaving Emmett in the store. “For less than a minute he was alone in the store with Carolyn Bryant, the white woman working at the cash register,” Simeon wrote. “What he said, if anything, I don’t know.”5
Nor do we. On September 2, when Carolyn told her attorney in private what had happened at the store, she claimed only, “I waited on him and when I went to take his money, he grabbed my hand and said how about a date, and I walked away from him, and he said, ‘What’s the matter, baby, can’t you take it?’ He went out the door and said, ‘Goodbye,’ and I went to the car and got [the] pistol and when I came back he whistled at me—this while I was going after [the] pistol—didn’t do anything further after he saw [the] pistol.” It is crucial to note that this account does not include the physical assault she testified to in court twenty days later.6 The Greenwood Morning Star, having interviewed Sheriff George Smith of Leflore County, reported on September 1, “The Bryants were said to have become offended when young Till waved to the woman and said ‘goodbye’ when he left the small store Saturday night.”7 Two days later Smith added the statement “Till made an ugly remark to Mrs. Bryant.”8 Another report indicated that Emmett was “insolent” to Carolyn, having failed to say “Yes, ma’am” when addressing her.9 When J.W. and Roy invaded the Wright home with guns to kidnap Emmett, they called him “the one that done the talking up at Money” and “the one that done the smart talk up at Money,” so clearly they were focused on a verbal offense. If Emmett had put his hands on Carolyn, it is unimaginable that neither J.W. nor Roy would have mentioned it. “The talking,” “the smart talk,” “an ugly remark”—at that point no one mentioned or even suggested that anything physical, sexual, or threatening had happened.
Years later Ruthie Mae Crawford told the documentarian Keith Beauchamp in an interview that she watched Emmett through the plate glass window the entire time. She insisted that the only mistake he made was to place his candy money directly in Carolyn’s hand rather than put it on the counter, as was common practice between whites and blacks.10 This alone would have violated Mississippi’s racial etiquette. How serious a violation was entirely a matter of mores, not a question of law. Of course, even to look Bryant directly in the eye would be to break the “cake of custom” that accompanied legal segregation.11
In an interview in 2005 Simeon supported Ruthie Mae’s recollection, telling a reporter that Emmett had paid for some gum and placed the money in Bryant’s hand, violating a Mississippi taboo about which he may have known nothing.12 Whatever Simeon saw propelled him to act: he quickly went into the store, perhaps to extricate Emmett from potential trouble. “After a few minutes,” wrote Simeon, “he paid for his items and we left the store together.”13
Wheeler said Emmett was in the store alone with Carolyn for “less than a minute”; Simeon measured it at “a few minutes.” What could possibly have transpired in such a short time? Between “within a minute” and “after a few minutes” is the time frame we must fill. Between Parker and Till entering the store, between Parker leaving his cousin alone in the store and Wright and Till leaving the store, something happened that Carolyn would decide deserved, what? Something. Whatever it was made Carolyn angry enough to fetch a pistol. On the way out of the store, Maurice Wright reported, Till turned and told Carolyn Bryant, “Goodbye.”
Before the seven black youths dispersed, Carolyn stomped out of the store, heading straight toward her sister-in-law’s car, which was parked near the door. If she had been afraid, if what she had experienced had been tantamount to sexual assault, as she testified in court, walking through the group outside would have been an odd choice; she could just as easily have turned the deadbolt on the front door and stayed inside. It seems whatever happened in that store made her more mad than fearful.
“She’s going to get a pistol,” Wheeler reported one of the boys saying.14 Carolyn reached under the driver’s seat for her husband’s .45 automatic. All agreed that at this point Emmett let out a “wolf whistle.” “To this day I don’t know what possessed Emmett to do that,” Simeon said. “We didn’t put him up to it. Many of the books and stories said that we dared him to do it. But that’s not the truth. He did it on his own, and we had no idea why.”15
“He did whistle,” Carolyn told me, “but it was after he’d been in [the store] and I went out to get the pistol.”
Simeon wrote later, “We all looked at each other, realizing that Bobo had violated a longstanding unwritten law, a social taboo about conduct between blacks and whites in the South.” The local youths were dumbfounded. “Suddenly, we felt we were in danger and we stared at each other, all with the same expression of fear and panic. Like a group of boys who had thrown a rock through somebody’s window, we ran to the car.”16