? ? ?
The real Emmett Till was also not in evidence at the national protests that continued well into the spring of 1956, but his family and their Mississippi allies certainly were. T. R. M. Howard’s finest hour came at what A. Philip Randolph billed as “the Historic Madison Square Garden Civil Rights Rally,” otherwise known as the “Heroes of the South” rally. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters did much of the organizing, and In Friendship, a fundraising organization, did the rest. Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, Norman Thomas, and other liberals, radicals, and labor activists in New York founded In Friendship in early 1956, using the energy around the Till case and the Montgomery Bus Boycott to fund the boycott and to assist grassroots activists in the South who suffered economic reprisals for their civil rights activities. The Heroes of the South rally, set for May 24, 1956, at Madison Square Garden, was their first big project.37
The rally drew more than sixteen thousand people. Besides Randolph and Howard, the evening featured Eleanor Roosevelt, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Roy Wilkins, Autherine Lucy, Rosa Parks, and E. D. Nixon. Parks and Nixon filled in for the headliner, Martin Luther King Jr., who backed out to attend a meeting in Montgomery. Sammy Davis Jr. and the bandleader Cab Calloway provided musical entertainment.
Randolph introduced Howard as “a man who has dedicated his life to the cause.” He praised Howard for confronting “the racialism and tribalism of those who would strike down the Constitution and take away the rights of the people of Mississippi merely because of color.”38 Howard followed with a Cold War thrust: “I come to you tonight from that Iron Curtain country called Mississippi. I tried to call home a few minutes ago to see if we were still in the Union.” He quickly reviewed his home state’s hardcore racist history, mentioning the notorious Senator Theodore Bilbo and the still venomous Senator James O. Eastland. His humor was sly and sharp-edged. “The governor recently called a special session of the legislature to have the letters N, A, C and P removed from the alphabet and to have the words ‘integration’ and ‘desegregation’ stricken from the English language.”39
Howard described the recent upheavals in race relations in Mississippi since Brown v. Board of Education and the NAACP’s campaigns for desegregation of the public schools and access to the ballot. The Citizens’ Council, “the worst internal threat that we have to our American way of life,” was spreading across the South. Reverend George Lee, “a great friend of mine,” and Lamar Smith, “a personal friend of mine,” had been murdered for seeking voting rights, and no one had been arrested in either case. The boy Emmett Till had ascended to a pantheon of martyrs, a rallying point alongside Lee and Smith for justice and progress. “We have grown tired of fighting for something across the sea that we can’t vote for in Belzoni.” Howard asserted, “The [white] people of Mississippi are not afraid of the Supreme Court. They are not afraid of Congress. But every time you mention the NAACP, they tremble in their boots. We should all support the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”
Asking the crowd for a show of hands, Howard remarked that a large majority of those present were blacks born in the South. “The reason that you’re in New York,” he said, “is because you were running away from some of those conditions that we have described here tonight.” He confronted not just the Jim Crow South but the complacent North: “The pitiful part of it is that you have forgotten about the conditions in the South and you are not doing much about the damnable conditions that exist right here in New York City.” Appreciating his candor, the crowd slowly began to applaud, building to a roar.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he responded, “the people of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi cannot hear your applause tonight. We’ve got to do something more than just clap our hands about the situation. I believe the papers ought to carry tomorrow that this group gave a hundred thousand dollars to help carry the fight in the Southland.”40
As Howard took his seat, Randolph reminded the crowd that they were “planning to use the funds that are collected at this meeting for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” At that point, the boycott was almost six months old and showed no sign of ending anytime soon. The UPWA donated $1,632.04, boosting their support for the boycott that spring to well over $5,000; they would continue to be major supporters of Dr. King’s work throughout the 1960s. Local 32 of the United Steelworkers gave an additional $1,000 at the rally, and the Transport Workers Union wrote a check for $700.41
Conspicuous by her absence that night was Mamie Bradley. She had shared her grief with the nation, inviting the world to “see what they did to my boy.” In early September, weeks before the beginning of the trial, she had clarity about her role in the drama of her boy’s death and the potential redemption of her loss. “This is not just for Emmett,” she said only a week after his funeral, “because my boy can’t be helped now, but to make it safe for other boys.” She vowed to see that his killers were punished but also insisted that the federal government must protect all black citizens. “I’m willing to go anywhere, to speak anywhere, to get justice.” A falling-out with Roy Wilkins soon curtailed her speaking schedule, but she never ended her cry for justice, not until she died in 2003.42
Except there was no justice to be had for Emmett Till, not in 1955, not in 1956, not even decades later. The depth and malignancy of white supremacy beggared notions of justice. There was progress, eventually, which came with the effort of a great many and the deaths of more than a few on the battlefields of race in America. One consequence of the public battle that Mamie Bradley started was that her son became less of a boy and more of an icon that spoke to those struggling across the nation, in both the North and the South. “Everyone knew we were under attack,” recalled one black journalist, “and that attack was symbolized by the attack on a fourteen-year-old boy.”43