Both sheriffs first drove to Leslie Milam’s place with Howard and searched the floor of the barn for bloodstains. They found none, but it was obvious that someone had cleaned the floor recently; it was newly covered with corn and soybeans. Unfortunately the investigators did not have the resources or the time to perform a more scientific examination.
Sheriff Smith, who had been battling Sheriff Strider ever since Till’s body was retrieved from the Tallahatchie River, acknowledged that he had been looking for witnesses for several weeks and joined the hunt with enthusiasm. “These witnesses have a story to tell,” he said. “We’ve got to find them if it takes all night.”17 The teams agreed to reconvene at eight for a meeting with the witnesses. None of the expeditions went easily. Frank Young did not turn up until one in the morning and refused to talk to anyone but Howard, who was not available.
Moore, Evers, and Hurley put on their farmhand disguises, whisked up the black reporter Moses Newsome of the Memphis Tri-State Defender, and combed the plantations and swamplands for witnesses, finding three: Willie Reed, eighteen; his grandfather Add Reed; and their neighbor Amanda Bradley, fifty. Their stories generally confirmed the one Frank Young had told. After Howard promised to protect them in the short term and afterward relocate them to Chicago, all three agreed to testify.18
? ? ?
A number of things about the Till trial did not conform to the stereotypes of Mississippi justice in 1955. Judge Swango’s fair-minded, even-handed conduct from the bench ran counter to what most observers expected. But perhaps nothing was quite so striking as the workings of Howard’s Mississippi underground, a collection of NAACP activists, black and white newspaper reporters, and law enforcement officials who scoured the countryside for witnesses. For Howard and the NAACP contingent, the struggle for justice was motive enough. The reporters sought justice, too, perhaps, but also a story. Judge Swango seems to have genuinely wanted a fair and impartial trial, though it was perhaps more a question of honor than outcome. As for the two sheriffs, they knew that these witnesses could shift the trial from Strider’s jurisdiction to their respective jurisdictions, but was a desire for justice their motive for joining the search? They may have simply disliked Strider. Or perhaps they just wanted to be able to face themselves in the mirror. Whatever their reasons, this strange, seemingly fearless group swung into action and found the only witnesses for the prosecution that could tie Milam and Bryant to the scene of the crime.
14
“THERE HE IS”
The trial resumed at 9:20 on Wednesday morning. As Moses Wright made his way toward the front of the sweltering courtroom, quiet fell so that you could hear feet shuffling and the low whump, whump, whump of the ceiling fan. It was the third day of the trial. The authorities had brought in a hundred or so cane-bottom chairs in an effort to keep people off the windowsills and away from the faded lime-green walls. If it had been empty with a good breeze, the room would have reached ninety degrees that day; stuffed sweatbox fashion, the temperature likely reached a hundred or more. The Delta Democrat-Times called the courtroom “an oven-hot, smoke-filled room that was jammed to the walls with spectators.”1 The two four-blade ceiling fans seemed only to stir the cigarette smoke. Such oppressive heat discouraged movement other than the polyrhythmic batting of several dozen handheld cardboard church fans of the sort common in the South before air-conditioning.2
After two days of jury selection and delays, the short, wiry, dark-skinned preacher was the first witness called. That was not the only reason for the rapt attention in the room, however. Moses Wright was a black man called to testify against two white men charged with murder. In Mississippi that constituted an almost suicidal affront to white supremacy. And he had been duly warned.
Neatly dressed in a white shirt, black pants, a thin, dark blue tie with light blue stripes, and white suspenders, Wright settled into the big wooden witness chair, the back of which reached nearly to the top of his head. He tugged nervously at his thick, workingman’s fingers that had been clearing fields of cotton. “I wasn’t exactly brave and I wasn’t scared,” he said later. “I just wanted to see justice done.”3
District Attorney Chatham cast his first witness in the role of the kindly old black retainer, calling him “Uncle Mose” and even “Old Man Mose” throughout his testimony. Very likely Chatham was playing to his jury, knowing undue respect shown a black man, beyond a kindly paternalism, would only hurt his case. But Wright’s presence and demeanor—he sat ramrod straight in the wooden chair—commanded attention, and the DA’s questions soon cut to the heart of the matter. “Now, Uncle Mose, after you and your family had gone to bed that night, I want you to tell the jury if any person or if one or more persons called at your home that night, and if they did what time was it?”
“About two o’clock,” Wright answered. “Well, someone was at the front door, and he was saying, ‘Preacher—Preacher.’ And then I said, ‘Who is it?’ And then he said, ‘This is Mr. Bryant. I want to talk to you and that boy.’?” When he opened the door, though he acknowledged that he could see neither of the men all that well, he recognized J. W. Milam.
The district attorney asked, “You know Mr. Milam, do you?”
“I sure do,” replied Wright.
“And what did you see when you opened the door?”
“Well, Mr. Milam was standing there at the door with a pistol in his right hand and he had a flashlight in his left hand.”
“Now stop there a minute, Uncle Mose,” instructed Chatham. “I want you to point out Mr. Milam if you see him here.”
Moses Wright stood up as tall as his five feet three inches would take him, pointed “a knobby finger at J. W. Milam,” and said, “There he is,” reported the Greenwood Commonwealth, a local white newspaper.4
The photographer Ernest Withers raised his camera and took a picture of the cotton farmer in his crisp, clean shirt and neat, thin tie, standing straight and pointing at Milam, who shifted nervously in his chair, puffing a small cigar. One of the wire services bought Withers’s roll of film on the spot and the photograph, carried by newspapers around the world, became an iconic image of courage.5
“And do you see Mr. Bryant in here?” asked Chatham. Wright pointed again.
“Uncle Mose,” Chatham continued, “do you see any man in this courtroom now who was with Mr. Milam that night at your house?”
“Yes, sir.”
The defense interrupted with an objection, to no avail.