A journalist whose 1956 article was billed as the “true account” of Emmett Till’s murder withheld credible information about people involved in the crime, according to newly discovered documents.
William Bradford Huie’s article in Look magazine helped shape the country’s understanding of 14-year-old Till’s abduction, torture and slaying in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. The article detailed the confessions of two White men who previously had been acquitted by an all-White jury in the murder. The men told Huie they had no accomplices.
Yet Huie’s own research notes, recently released by the descendants of a lawyer in the case, indicate his reporting showed that others were involved and suggest he chose to leave that out when it threatened the sale of his story. He also was seeking a movie deal about the murder and had agreed to pay the two acquitted men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, part of the proceeds.
If Huie had fully reported what he’d learned, it could have led to charges against additional participants in the murder, three historians say.
Protected by the U.S. Constitution’s double-jeopardy clause, Milam and Bryant told Huie after their acquittal that they had killed Till after Carolyn Bryant, Roy’s wife, claimed the boy accosted her in August 1955.
“Between 1955 and 2005, it was without question the single most influential version of the story. And [Huie] was intentionally protecting guilty people,” said Dave Tell, a University of Kansas professor whose 2019 book, “Remembering Emmett Till,” was harshly critical of Huie’s reporting.
Till’s brutal lynching shocked the world and helped galvanize the civil rights movement. But misconceptions of the events leading to his death have persisted, and the FBI has reopened the case several times — most recently in 2017.
In addition to Huie’s 33-page research notes, the newly released documents include letters he exchanged with John Whitten, one of the men’s defense attorneys. Whitten’s granddaughter, Ellen Whitten, found the documents in April and with her mother donated them to the Emmett Till Archives at Florida State University [diginole.lib.fsu.edu].
“I think shedding light on historical wrongs is never a bad thing,” Ellen Whitten said in an interview.
Deborah Watts, Till’s cousin and co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, said the revelations in the documents are important.
“But in terms of vindication? Emmett died. And he died because of a number of lies,” she said. “We knew that they were lying on Emmett. We knew there were many that sought a profit and a payoff from the pain that our family experienced.”