Father and Son

The Story of Louis Till

The telegram arrived on a Friday.

It had taken nearly two weeks to travel from Italy to the small apartment on Chicago’s South Side. For its recipient, like for so many women around the United States at the time, this was a moment to dread: the arrival of the rectangular, beige Western Union notice bearing the name of the husband, father, or brother who would never come home alive. For Mamie Till-Mobley, that day was July 13, 1945.

A few days later, the Army sent along her husband’s personal things—the physical items that made up the last touchstones to life for Louis Till, who was 20 years old when he enlisted in the Army in 1942. A document sent with the items would include the cause for death: “willful misconduct,” offering no other word despite his wife’s later requests for further explanation about how her husband died on July 2, 1945, nearly two months after VE Day. And because of his “willful misconduct,” Mamie would not receive any veterans’ benefits afforded to other Gold Star Wives—and neither would their son, Emmett, who would turn four in a few days.

Among the personal items was one thing Louis Till’s son would come to inherit—a silver ring that Louis had bought in Casablanca. It was engraved with his initials, “LT”, and the date he bought it: May 25, 1943. For young Emmett, that ring would be among the few things that proved his father was ever alive, or that he ever had a father at all. Before father and son could ever establish a relationship, Mamie and Louis had separated, due to Louis’ alleged infidelity and violent outbursts against his wife. Young Emmett would try on that ring throughout his boyhood, asking questions about his father, to many of which his mother had no answer, including about how he really died.

The truth was, Louis Till was hanged.

In 1944, Private Louis Till was stationed in Italy, among the tens of thousands of Black troops who served in WWII. At the time, the United States military was still segregated—it would remain that way until July 26, 1948. Those who fought fascism abroad weren’t afforded their full freedoms at home or on the front. Till served in the 177^th Port Company of the 379^th Port Battalion, in the Transportation Corps, helping move men and materiel across Europe. It was an unglamorous job and most of the men in his unit were Black like him. On the night of June 27 that year he found himself in a town called Civitavecchia, an ancient port town less than 40 miles northwest of Rome.

It will always be unclear what exactly happened that night, but a few things are certain. An air-raid occurred as antiaircraft weaponry fired into the night sky—triggering the boom of sirens that were so common to hear throughout Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s. And in the ensuing 90 minutes, two women—Freida Mari and Elena Lucretzia—were raped, and a third woman, Anna Zanchi, was murdered.

In the initial murder investigation, no weapon, suspects or motive were discovered. But then the investigators heard rumors about the two other women—which led them to link the cases. Soon, they focused on a group of men who three days prior to June 27 were found attempting to sell thirteen bags of stolen sugar in town. Among them, Private Louis Till. Soon, Till and Private Fred A. McMurray, also Black and in the Transportation Corps, were pinned as the two men responsible for that evening’s horrific events. When asked to tell his version of the story, Till was mum, allegedly telling one investigator, "There's no use in me telling you one lie and then getting up in court and telling another one."

Till and McMurray were arrested on July 19, 1944 and subsequently tried together. During the trial, one of the victims, Freida Mari, was asked to describe her assailant, whom she called light skinned. She was then asked if anyone fitting that description was in the courtroom that day. Looking around—at Till, and at McMurray—she said no. Other witnesses said there were three, or four, assailants that evening. Perhaps the best witness, Freida Mari’s father, said he saw the three assailants the next day in broad daylight. Yet, in the courtroom, he failed to identify the two men standing trial, despite their presence at the defendants’ table. The trial—like the accusations themselves—will forever be shrouded in mystery. The witness testimony was all translated, all “reduced” to typed summaries, not transcripts, by the U.S. Army officials who held the trial. There is no doubting the crime itself happened, and the reality is that Till and McMurray may have been guilty, but it’s hard to believe that the verdict handed down by the Court Martial was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, that even in the fog of war, Till and McMurray received a fair trial.

After the trial, both soldiers were transferred to the United States Army Disciplinary Training Center in Aversa, a small city in southern Italy. There, Louis Till lived out his last days. On July 2, 1945, he stepped up to the gallows, and was blindfolded by a United States military official as a noose was placed around his neck. He was then hanged.

After his execution, his body was transported to the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, about 75 miles east of Paris. In plots A through D, which honor nearly 6,000 dead, the graves are marked by immaculately maintained white stone crosses, much like those found at Normandy. But away from the main four quadrants, hidden by trees to those who visit—there are 96 graves that make up Plot E, designated for those Americans who were executed by their own military after being found guilty of rape or murder. There, in the corner of Plot E, under a stone marked only “73,” Louis Till’s body was laid to rest.

Almost exactly a decade later, in August 1955, that silver ring from Casablanca finally fit his son, Emmett. He still didn’t know the truth about his father, and he never would—his mother would only find out in the awful months to come. As he packed for a trip to visit his relatives for two weeks in Money, Mississippi, Emmett put that ring on his middle finger. His mother said it was okay that he wear it. Like the solo trip South, the ring was another sign that her little boy was becoming a man. As she took him to the train station to board the train they call The City of New Orleans, she saw his smiling eyes brimming with wonder—and that ring glistening off her 14-year-old son’s hand.

Emmett Till arrived in Money, Mississippi to the home of his Great Uncle Moses on August 21, 1955. At 7:30 PM on August 24, he and his cousins—Wheeler Parker, Maurice Wright, Simeon Wright, Ruthie Mae Crawford and Roosevelt Crawford—went to buy candy at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Outside the store, Emmett teased his cousins about how in Chicago—far from the segregated South—he had already dated a white girl. This was unheard of, and as Wright Thompson has written in The Barn, exactly “the kind of thing an insecure fourteen-year-old boy would say.” Within a moment, Emmett followed one of his cousins inside, where a young white woman—Carolyn Bryant—was tending to the store. What happened then—if Emmett touched her hand, if he did or didn’t say ma’am, if he was overly flirtatious, if he did nothing at all besides buy candy—we can never be completely sure. But what happened next is clear: Carolyn Bryant came out of the store shortly after Emmett, and then…he whistled.

This was Mississippi in 1955. The prior year, in response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision that ruled racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, the very first White Citizens Council was established in Mississippi to defy the order. And it worked. By 1960, less than 6 percent of Black kids in the South attended a desegregated school. Emmett Till wasn’t going up against the backlash to one Supreme Court ruling, but an entire century of history, from the Civil War, the end of Reconstruction and every single thing that happened in the eleven states that made up the Old Confederacy between April 9, 1861 and August 24, 1955.

Four days later, on August 28, Emmett Till was kidnapped in the middle of the night from Moses Wright’s home by Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband and J.W. Milam, her brother-in-law, along with a host of others who never faced criminal accusations. The lynch mob then brought the boy to a barn owned by Milam in Drew, Mississippi. After Till was tortured, a cotton gin fan was tied around his neck, and he was thrown in the Tallahatchie River, living the last moments of his short life in incomprehensible terror. A few days later, his body was found by 17-year-old Robert Hughes on August 31 while he was going out to fish on a late summer’s day.

Before the trial of Bryant and Milam—a trial which lasted five days and after which the all-white, all-male jury deliberated for 67 minutes before finding the defendants not guilty—Emmett’s Great Uncle, Moses Wright was asked to identify the body, which was so bloated and disformed it looked like a work of science fiction. This was not the boy who dreamed of becoming a policeman, or a firefighter, or a Major League Baseball player like White Sox third baseman Minnie Minosa, who he had seen play, or even his all-time favorite, Dodgers’ pitcher Don Newcombe. This was not the boy who smiled brightly as he boarded the City of New Orleans train. This was not the face of the boy whose eyes had met his mother’s for the first time inside the delivery room at Cook County Hospital on July 24, 1941—just 14 years prior.

And then Moses Wright saw that ring.

“LT. May 23, 1943.”

That was him. That was Emmett Till.

Sources:

Valerie Smith. “Emmett Till’s Ring.” Women’s Studies Quarterly. Spring 2008.

https://www.proquest.com/docview/233656950?sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals

Wright Thompson. The Barn. 2024.

https://www.amazon.com/Barn-Secret-History-Murder-Mississippi/dp/0593299825

John Edgar Wideman. “A Black and White Case.” Esquire, Oct 19. 2016.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a48989/black-and-white-case/