Some used the searing national criticism of Mississippi to explain the performance of justice unfolding in the courtroom: the state’s critics, they argued, had swelled Strider’s sympathy for Roy and Milam. But prosecutor Hamilton Caldwell countered that Strider “was for the boys all along.” Carolyn Bryant later noted that well before the murder the Milams and Bryants believed that their association with Strider made them immune to prosecution. As early as September 3, only three days after Till’s body was found, Strider told reporters he did not believe the body was Till’s: “The body we took from the river looked more like that of a grown man instead of a young boy. It was also more decomposed than it should have been after that short a stay in the water.”26 This contrasted sharply from his assessment of the body’s condition right after they pulled it from the river, when he said it looked like it had been there only two days. This shift had a political purpose, of course; if it had been in the water for more than a few days, the body could not have been Emmett Till’s. The following day Strider told reporters, “The whole thing looks like a deal made up by the NAACP.”27 Sheriff George Smith of Leflore County quickly and publicly disagreed. His deputy, John Ed Cothran, could not keep silent, either, and stated emphatically that he’d been present when Moses Wright identified the body by the silver ring engraved with Till’s father’s initials.28
But in the Tallahatchie County Courthouse their dissents amounted to little. Strider soon elaborated on his theory to reporters from the Greenwood Morning Star: “It just seems to me that the evidence is getting slimmer and slimmer. I’m chasing down some evidence now that the killing might have been planned and plotted by the NAACP.”29 Hodding Carter Jr., the editor of the Delta Democrat-Times, wondered, “Whoever heard of a sheriff offering on the flimsiest construction of fact, the perfect piece of evidence for the defense? Without a corpus delicti, there can be no murder conviction—of anyone.” Carter pointed out the irony that the same man who now denied that the body was Till’s had claimed jurisdiction over the case on the basis of some blood he said he had found on a bridge.30
Of course Strider wasn’t brazen in a vacuum. The tide of public opinion seemed to run ever more in his favor. Governor White wrote to a colleague, “I’m afraid the public has become so aroused over the NAACP agitation that it will be impossible to convict these men.”31 Though editors and politicians like White blamed the turn on the NAACP and Northern critics, the fuming of Mississippi editors pushed public opinion considerably. Nevertheless, to the genuine surprise of many observers, a grand jury issued indictments against Milam and Bryant for murder on September 7.32
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The man running the murder trial inside Strider’s citadel would draw high marks from the press corps. James Hicks of the National Negro Press Association and the Afro-American News Service, who came to the trial a self-described “skeptic of Mississippi’s white man’s justice,” wrote afterward that no judge “could have been more painstakingly and eminently fair in the conduct of the trial than Judge Curtis M. Swango of Sardis, Mississippi.”33 Greenville’s Delta Democrat-Times averred, “[Swango] is providing the South with the best public relations it has had since the invention of the Southern Accent first enchanted Northern ears.”34 Murray Kempton of the New York Post, immune to any charming drawl of Southern-fried public relations, called Judge Swango “a quiet man firmly and graciously committed to a fair trial whatever the verdict.”35 Even the rabidly segregationist Jackson Daily News agreed that the jurist was “to be warmly commended for his scrupulously correct conduct in the face of what must be a difficult situation.” That paper also called his selection “good casting”: “[He] looks like Hollywood’s idea of what a judge should look like.”36
Though he banned broadcasts, photography, and recording during testimony, Judge Swango delighted journalists by permitting them to shoot pictures during the fifteen minutes before trial and during intermissions. He also permitted smoking in the courtroom and made a gesture toward comfort by suggesting that the men remove their jackets in the sweltering heat.37 He sipped a cold Coca-Cola during jury selection and let participants and spectators do likewise. Others drank beer without reprimand.38 On the first day of the trial one of the courthouse custodians walked in with a wooden crate full of glass bottles of ice-cold Coca-Cola and quickly sold each one for a dollar, though at that time soft drinks cost a nickel. When the crate was empty he sold that, too, for a dollar, as a makeshift chair.39 Yet nobody described Judge Swango’s courtroom as lax. “The dignified magistrate has an authoritative voice and a husky gavel and doesn’t hesitate to use it,” wrote Harry Marsh, a Southern liberal with the Delta Democrat-Times. “But most of all he has displayed great patience and fairness in the two days required to select a jury in the hot, crowded courtroom.”40
The photographers and reporters, especially the African American contingent, appreciated Swango’s letting them roam the courtroom before the proceedings and during breaks. One of them, Ernest Withers, snapping pictures for the Memphis Tri-State Defender, would become a famed civil rights photographer and seemed at ease even in the tense atmosphere. One day a white man in the crowd suddenly jumped up and demanded, “Nigger, don’t take my picture.” Withers, who was born in Memphis and had worked as one of the city’s first black police officers, shrugged. “Don’t worry,” he deadpanned, “I’m only taking important people today.” James Hicks, a Northerner, taking nervous drags on a cigarette at the card table set aside for African American reporters, muttered to Withers, “Man, you’ll get us lynched down here.”41
The spectators in shirtsleeves, the sweating bottles of Coca-Cola, the roaming interracial pool of reporters, the judge’s demeanor—none of these influenced the substance of the murder trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam. On Monday, September 19, the first day of the trial, selection of ten of the twelve needed jurors began promptly at nine o’clock. Sheriff Strider and Sheriff-elect Harry Dogan, who between them knew virtually everyone in the county, helped the defense lawyers vet the 125 potential jurors. That it would be an all-white jury went without saying. “No Negroes will serve on the jury,” explained the Jackson Daily News. “Women do not serve on Mississippi juries, either.”42
The prosecution dismissed three juror prospects for admitting to having contributed money to the defense fund, which reportedly collected $6,000 in the Delta.43 Other common causes for dismissal included being related to the defendants or one of the attorneys in the case, knowing the defendants, living near where the murder presumably occurred, or holding “fixed opinions” on the case.44 The prosecution eliminated only one prospective juror, a cotton farmer, for reasons associated with racial prejudice; he did not admit to such prejudice but appeared unable to understand the question or reluctant to respond.45 Another man, asked whether he had a “fixed opinion” about the crime, replied, “Anybody in his right mind would have a fixed opinion.”46