What didn't make it into my WaPo Emmett Till story

More bias, background and the angel of history

Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley

On Aug. 28, the 69th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till, I published a piece in the Washington Post about newly discovered documents in the case. If you haven’t read it, here is a gift link.

The documents, recently found and donated by the granddaughter of a Mississippi attorney, show that a prominent journalist intentionally hid credible information about the lynching in his famous story about it. The journalist, William Bradford Huie, did it to make money, which he planned to share with two of Till’s killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, and their attorney. Historians told me the inaccurate article set the pursuit of justice back decades.

The most damning stuff is in the WaPo story, but there was frankly so much flagrantly unethical behavior that much of it was cut. I promised to expand on it here, so here goes.

More admissions of bias

Here are a few more quotes from the December 1955 letters from Huie to John Whitten Sr., Milam and Bryant’s attorney:

“Now, you and I, are letting the facts come out. These facts were bound to come out anyway. So we are letting them come out under our control — and we are deliberately trying to out-maneuver our more vic[i]ous ‘enemies.’”¹

That’s not how journalists are supposed to talk to the attorneys of their subjects! Not today, and not in 1955. Huie never says explicitly who these enemies are, but it’s clear from the context that he means civil rights activists.

In another part, he worries the movie producers he wants to sell the story to will turn what he thinks is a complicated tale with two sides into “a simple violent conflict between Good and Evil. And I don’t have to tell you that Big Milam would not be Good.”

MORE HARD-G HISTORY: Get the 'arc of the moral universe' out of your mouth.

We are talking about the lynching of a child by a group of racist men acting with impunity. But Huie thinks it’s complicated because Till supposedly had a picture of a white girl in his wallet.

He assures the attorney he won’t let that simplification into good and evil happen.

“I want to make money here — for me, for you, for Milam and Bryant. But I am willing to make this money only within the limitations which you understand. And I am quite capable of turning down large sums of money if I think the story is going to be flagrantly twisted for commercial and propaganda purposes.”

Again, that is not how journalists are supposed to talk to sources!

Huie’s selective belief in Black witnesses

The new infomation about Huie’s interview with Till’s great-aunt Elizabeth Wright was a main focus of my article. It was from her and her husband’s house that Till was kidnapped the night he was killed. According to the docs, Wright told Huie there was a third kidnapper inside the house — the first time this has been claimed. Huie did not include this in his famous story, which falsely claimed only two men kidnapped and killed Till.²

What’s notable to me, and what didn’t make it into my article, is that Huie did include something else Wright told him in his story — that she was the one who convinced Till not to leave Mississippi immediately after the incident at Bryant’s Grocery. (Wright had heard a toned-down version of the incident, and so didn’t think Till was in danger.) Until now, we didn’t know where Huie got that part of his article.

By including that tidbit, Huie is telling on himself. He found her reliable, but he picked and chose what to include as it suited him, a cardinal sin in investigative journalism. If the format of your story — in this case what we would now call a “tick-tock” — cannot hold the complexity and competing narratives your reporting has uncovered, then you should change the format, not the story.

Huie also included a quote from Wright’s husband’s trial testimony — that Till “looked like a man” — but failed to mention Moses Wright also testified to seeing a third kidnapper outside the house.

Huie acknowledges the killers’ inaccuracies

In the letters, Huie breaks the news to Whitten that his clients’ claim that Till was at least 18 years old and at least 5-foot 8-inches tall are proveably untrue. He calls these facts “propaganda disadvantages.”

So Huie admits he’s aware that not everything Milam and Bryant told him checks out. But in the bulk of his published story he reported their false version of events as “the facts” and the “true account.” As late as 1979, he was falsely claiming he had independently confirmed everything they told him.

Huie’s other reporting issues

My WaPo story included a brief bio of Huie, but the space constraints didn’t allow me to mention his long history of journalistic misconduct allegations. Here is a brief summary:

• His 1930s Collier’s magazine article about Alabama football players was retracted for copious inaccuracies.

• In 1952, a U.S. senator for West Virginia sued three newspapers for libel after they reprinted a Huie article claiming the senator “looks unblushingly to the Stalin worshipers both for instructions and for money.”

• A judge jailed Huie for contempt in 1954 during the trial of Ruby McCollum, a Black woman who killed a white politician in Florida. The judge claimed Huie had attempted to influence a trial witness.

• Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, wanted to sue Huie after his story published, since it depicted her son as a defiant brute. The effort failed since the libeled person was deceased.

• Three men sued Huie for libel in 1966 in connection with his reporting on the murder of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. They later settled, with Huie agreeing to pay them but not admitting guilt.³

• A judge jailed Huie for contempt in 1969 in connection with the trial of MLK assassin James Earl Ray. Huie paid Ray at least $25,000 for his life rights and published stories claiming he had proof of a conspiracy to assassinate King, which he later recanted.

• Huie claimed in 1977 that the Scottsboro Boys — a group of Black teenagers accused of rape in 1931 — were guilty. All of the accused are now officially acknowledged as innocent.

Perhaps it doesn’t seem too terrible that some of Huie’s false statements were about racists or murderers. But his sloppy reporting and concealed biases contributed, and continues to contribute, to the fog of injustice that protects racism. It feeds the old beasts of “They were no angels,” “Well, we’ll never know the truth” and and “It’s just another he said-she said.”

Huie’s passive language

In the published article, Huie describes the moment of Till’s murder like this: “That big .45 jumped in Big Milam's hand.”

What oddly passive wording, especially for a professional writer. Who intended to kill Emmett Till, Milam or the gun? Did the gun misfire? Did Milam claim to Huie it misfired? It reminded me of the passive headlines we still see today: “Man dies after confrontation with police.” How did he die? Was he killed? Who killed him?

In Huie’s research notes, which we were never supposed to see, there is no hedging: “He shot him once through the head with a ‘soft-nosed .45.’ Milam: ‘That’s why somebody thought he’d been chopped with an axe. That soft-nosed bullet takes off a chunk about the size of your hand.’”

Connections

Editors will often ask journalists to write a “sweepy” paragraph, something that gives the big picture or connects the past and present.

Here’s what I wrote, which didn’t make it to the final cut:

Journalism is often called “the first rough draft of history,” and in recent years, teaching that history — particularly Black history — has become increasingly difficult. Elected officials and parents’ groups nationwide have sought to prevent white students from learning anything “divisive” or that might cause them “discomfort” – regardless of its truth. The new documents in the Till case make clear these efforts to whitewash the truth sometimes began much sooner, in the very writing of history’s first rough draft.

‘Truth, justice and accountability’

I had a long and wonderful conversation with Deborah Watts, Till’s cousin and the co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation. Of course, only her reaction to the new documents made it into the WaPo story, but I want to share more of what she told me.

She said over and over that Till’s family was seeking “truth, justice and accountability.” She said it like an incantation. And so often, she said, those objectives were blocked by people motivated by what she called “the four Ps”: publishing, production, payoff and profit.

She said she respects journalists and historians who study Till’s murder, but many of them seem to hold her family’s pursuit of justice at arm’s length, as though a journalist or historian openly advocating for justice would be committing some crime against truth.

“That, to me, has been an element of derailment of true justice for Emmett Till,” she said. “It has allowed the lies to live, allowed the information to be suppressed.”

She connected it to democracy itself, pointing out that until recently, many journalists hadn’t felt the need to openly advocate for the system of government that allows a free press. “I think we’d be more respected in journalism and media if we were marrying these agendas, marrying the need for truth and justice in America. I would like to see partnership so justice can be achieved,” she said.

I asked her what justice looked like now, since all of Till’s killers are dead, and she responded, “Are they? Do we know that?” I conceded we don’t. But it is likely. She said they were “leaving no stone unturned” on that front — she and her foundation colleagues are the ones who found the old warrant for Carolyn Bryant’s arrest in 2022.

Beyond this, she said justice also looked like healing the generational trauma Till’s murder and all the other crimes like it have caused. She pointed to the Emmett Louis Till Victims Recovery Program recently passed in Minnesota, where she lives.⁴

The program is designed to address the health and wellness needs of victims and survivors of historical trauma, and so far has awarded grants to community centers, Black churches and therapy practices that serve victims of systemic racism.

The following never would have made it into the WaPo story, so I didn’t even try, but: Put me down as advocating for this program, for justice for Emmett Till and for accountability for all the historians, journalists and journalism practices that have slowed the progress of truth.

This is key to the arc of history, which Theodore Parker preached and MLK brought to the world: We are the ones who bend it toward justice. Time is neutral, and the arc doesn’t bend by itself.

And this is the key to the angel of history, which Walter Benjamin wrote down and Laurie Anderson sang: We are the angels, looking back at the wreckage and, in our desire to repair it, instead create a better future. It doesn’t happen by itself, or by passively pretending we could ever separate justice from the truth.

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1. I’ve italicized words that Huie underlined in his letters, since there’s no underline function on this platform.

2. They also claimed to have barely tortured Till, who they claimed, against all science, hardly bled. You should really read the full story.

3. One of the men was later convicted for his involvement in the murders, and one was acquitted. The third man was never named again in the many investigations of the murders by journalists and the FBI.

4. Yes, your favorite midwestern governor dad signed it.