The Emmett Till Memorial Commission has done more for the memory of Emmett Till than any other organization in the world. Since its founding in late 2005, the Commission has transformed the landscape of Tallahatchie County. They have created a 9-site driving tour (10 sites if you count the Interpretive Center in Sumner) and renovated Sumner's Tallahatchie County Courthouse, the site of the 1955 Till trial.

The Emmett Till Memorial Commission was formed when economic opportunism momentarily aligned with the pursuit of racial justice.

Tallahatchie County has had two courthouses since the early 20th century. The second courthouse (in Sumner) was built because the Tallahatchie River was prone to flooding and residents on the west side of the county were cut off from their courthouse in Charleston.

In 1947, however, the county built a modern bridge over State Highway 32, eliminating the need for two courthouses.

As resources became increasingly scarce as the cotton economy tanked in the second half of the 20th century, the county could no longer afford to maintain two courthouses. All resources went to Charleston.

As resources went to Charleston, the Sumner courthouse began to fall into disrepair. Some observant journalists noticed this disrepair as early as 1955. By the turn of the 21st century, the Sumner courthouse was on the verge of being condemned. Had this happened, Sumner's entire legal industry would have been pushed out, and the town would have been devastated. Thus it was that Harvey Henderson (a lawyer who once defended Till's murderers) approached local architect Richard Dickson about saving the courthouse. While there was not tax money to repair the courthouse, there was grant money to restore the courthouse to its 1955 condition. When his job was on the line, Harvey Henderson jump-started the push to restore the courthouse and remember Emmett Till.

But it was not all opportunism. The idea for an Emmett Till commission was pushed by Jerome Little, the first black president of the county's Board of Supervisors. Along with Willie Williams, Bobby Banks, Robert Grayson, John Wilchie, Susan Glisson, and Betty Pearson, Jerome Little steered the nascent organization toward social justice.

While there were some, like Henderson, who cared only about saving the town, the ETMC was always driven by a strong contingent of folks seeking racial justice. It was the racial justice wing of the Commission that organized a press conference in the fall of 2007.

It was a well-publicized and dramatic affair. With the Till family in town from Chicago and dignitaries on hand from across the region, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission offered a formal apology for the county's role in the Till murder.

Beginning in 2008, the Commission began building the Tallahatchie Civil Rights Driving Tour, putting up signs by the courthouse and around the county at various Emmett Till sites.

For over 17 years now, the Commission has been working to commemorate Till's murder. More importantly, the Commission uses the murder to pursue racial justice in the 21st century. They offer youth internship programs, video-making seminars, tours, racial justice training, and community development opportunities.

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In December 1955, J. W. Milam’s neighbor (and Till murder accomplice) Elmer Kimbrell murdered African American gas station attendant Clinton Melton.

Kimbrell was irate because Melton had filled his entire gas tank instead of simply putting in $2 as he had supposedly requested. Based on this slight, Kimbrell retrieved a shot gun and killed Melton on the spot. 

There were two African American witnesses to the murder, but it mattered not. Another all-white jury was convened in the Sumner courthouse, and another not-guilty verdict was reached. Curiously, this is the only site on the Tallahatchie Civil Rights Driving Tour not directly related to the Till murder. The Emmett Till Memorial Commission included this site at the urging of Plater Robinson, but one wonders why they did so.  The oddity of including the Melton murder site is only enhanced when we consider that the Commission did not commemorate several sites of obvious importance to the Till story: Bryant’s Grocery (where the whistle happened), the Wright home (site of the abduction), or the Milam Plantation (murder site).   Although the Melton murder is certainly tragic, from the perspective of the Till story (and the Commission’s mission), it pales in significance when compared to these other sites. Why, then, did the Commission include it? One reason: it is in Tallahatchie County and the other sites are not. By virtue of its bylaws, the Commission is tasked with generating revenue in Tallahatchie County. When it comes to commemoration then, the activity of the Commission is driven not simply by the facts of the murder; they are also driven by questions of jurisdiction. If it didn’t happen in Tallahatchie County, the Commission has not commemorated it.  The full name of the Commission? The Emmett Till Memorial Commission of Tallahatchie County, Inc. When Till commemoration was in its infancy in Mississippi, county lines mattered as much as the story itself. Sites inside Tallahatchie County were remembered even if they bore little connection to the Till story. Sites outside the county were not, even if they were intimately connected to the story. 

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The Emmett Till Memorial Commission originally planned for only a single river site sign to mark the spot of the body’s recovery. It was to be placed at Graball Landing, 2.6 miles downstream of this site. This sign was a last-minute addition to direct tourists down the lonely River Road towards Graball.  When the Commission was writing this sign, however, they used a story they had originally planned to use for the sign at Graball Landing. They crafted a small, mostly accurate narrative that noted that the body was discovered by fishermen “at this location” after three days in the water. It noted further that the body was weighted down with a cotton-gin fan and that it was identified by the Till family ring still clinging to the body. All of this was true.

Unfortunately, the Commission scrapped their accurate draft based on faulty information from historian Plater Robinson. Based on information that he learned firsthand from Simon Garrett (a mortician from Greenwood), Robinson fundamentally rewrote the sign. In a strongly worded letter to the Commission, Robinson insisted that, according to Garrett: "The body was never in the river, which was twenty yards away. Instead, the body was rolled down the levee into the “drift” (the area between the river and the levee). Heavy rains had bloated the river. When the water subsided, Emmett’s body was revealed. There was a black community (houses, church, and cemetery) a few feet away." This was a novel theory! In the fifty-three years between the murder and this communiqué, the fact that Till’s body was found in the river had never been questioned. The fact that the ETMC rewrote their sign according to these suggestions is a measure of just how much they trusted Plater Robinson. In place of their mostly accurate draft, they crafted (and installed) a sign that claimed Till’s body was never in the river. Although it is unclear where the fault lies, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the body was, in fact, in the river. In an undated follow-up letter to the ETMC, Robinson tried to correct the record, noting that he had been fed faulty information from Garrett. Whether the letter was received too late, or whether the ETMC simply preferred the body-in-the-mud theory, they ultimately chose to go with the story Robinson learned from Garrett. The sign that now stands where the Sharkey Bridge crosses the Tallahatchie River is the only ETMC sign with an egregious factual error. Despite what the sign says, the body was thrown in the river, it was not intended as a warning for an adjacent black community, and there is no evidence that such a community even existed.

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Built in 1920, the Delta Inn was a mansion that was the center of midcentury Sumner society and, during the trial, the site at which the jury was sequestered. With the help of renowned photographer Maude Schuyler Clay, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission crafted noncontroversial prose about the history of the hotel and its role in the trial. The prose was used for the lavender sign that once stood at this spot. At the urging of Plater Robinson, the Commission inserted a final line that claimed a cross was burned in front of the Delta Inn midway through the trial—an event which was widely reported at the time. Just before the Commission was formed in late 2005, John Whitten III purchased the site of the then-crumbling Delta Inn. Whitten is a direct descendant of John Whitten II, defense lawyer who used his closing argument in the Emmett Till trial to admonish the jury, “Every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men.” Much like his father, Whitten III’s record on race relations is poor. In 2009, the NAACP accused him of a hate crime for organizing a vigilante mob to pursue an untried, unarmed African American man whom he believed was guilty of burglary. He chased the man in a World War II-era armored tank.   Shortly after purchasing the site of the Delta Inn, Whitten hired a Greenwood firm to take it down brick by brick. A newspaper reporter with a keen eye noted, “Once the structure is demolished and the property cleared, Whitten will be left with a spacious vacant corner lot facing the town’s Courthouse Square.” Predictably, Whitten was not excited about the prospect of a sign on his property commemorating the murder of Emmett Till. Although the sign did not mention his father’s role in the injustice, one can imagine that Whitten is not looking for ways to commemorate his father’s legacy. Interviewed by NPR, he said, “We didn’t do it. It didn’t happen here. This was something that was dragged in and left to rot in our courthouse. . . . [It was] a long time ago, part of history. I don’t think it should be denied. I don’t think it should be honored.” Apparently, he also did not think it should be marked with a sign. Shortly after the signs were erected, Whitten was heard late at night on the square claiming that the Delta Inn roadside marker would end up on the bottom of the Tallahatchie River. Shortly thereafter, the sign went missing; the police did not investigate, and it has never been replaced.

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In 2008, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission (ETMC) erected a sign at this spot. Although nothing remains except an overgrown field, in 1955 this was the site of J.W. Milam's home and, critically, his shed.

The sign claims that Till was beaten here in the shed that once stood on this spot. This is not true.

When they wrote this sign, the ETMC was following the story told by LOOK magazine in January of 1956. Titled "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi," the LOOK article was one of the most influential versions of Till's story ever told. And it was virtually 100% false.

Since the murderers had already been acquitted in a court of law, LOOK magazine refused to print the story unless every named participant signed a waiver (see the documents for an example).

In fact, Till was tortured at the Seed Barn on the Milam Plantation in Sunflower County--27 miles west. But the barn was run by Leslie Milam (J.W.'s brother). Leslie did not sign a release form and could not be included in the story. So Huie moved the torture here, to J. W. Milams' shed in Glendora.

Ironically, barely 500 feet west of this sign is another ETMC sign commemorating King's Place, where the black journalist Jimmy Hicks learned about Levi "Too Tight" Collins and Henry Lee Loggins. But Collins and Loggins are only involved if the torture happened in Sunflower County. This means that the two signs, both erected by the ETMC in 2008, are mutually exclusive.

If Collins and Loggins were key witnesses, then King’s Place is a historic site but Milam’s shed is not. Alternately, if Milam’s shed is a historic site, then Collins and Loggins were red herrings and King’s Place was the site where the black press lost the story.

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During the Till trial of September 1955, embalmer Harry D. Malone was an important witness for the defense. He testified that the body was in such poor condition that it must have been in the Tallahatchie River for at least ten days. This, of course, meant that the body could not be Emmett Till and the defendants could not be guilty. Along with Sheriff Strider’s testimony, Malone’s narrative was a key factor in the jury’s official rationale for acquitting J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant.

However, in his closing remarks to the jury, prosecutor Robert Smith argued that Malone did not personally embalm the body and therefore was not in a position to judge either its condition or the amount of time it was in the river. Although Smith did not suggest an alternative, many believe that Till’s body was actually prepared by Malone’s black assistant Woodrow Jackson.

If it was Woodrow Jackson who embalmed the body in Tutwiler (and most historians now agree it was), this means that a key witness for the defense was lying on the stand. The acquittal was built on a false narrative.

Woodrow Jackson is an elusive figure in the history of the Till case. Not until the twenty-first century did he begin to appear in accounts of the murder. The reason he so rarely appeared in history is obvious: his presence in the Till story would undermine the supposed innocence of the murderers, whose acquittal required Malone as the primary embalmer instead of Jackson.

To right this wrong, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission has invested in the memory of Woodrow Jackson. When he passed in 2007, they issued a formal recognition of his role embalming the body. And when they commemorated the Tutwiler Funeral Home in 2008, their sign betrayed no hint of controversy: “On August 31, 1955, Woodrow Jackson prepared Emmett Till’s body here at the Tutwiler Funeral Home.”

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