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Journalist Hid Doubts, Details About Broader Plot in Emmett Till Murder

Documents recently uncovered show that a journalist, who in 1956 claimed to provide a "true account" of Emmett Till's murder, actually omitted reliable information regarding individuals involved in the crime, The Washington Post reports. 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 killing. 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 killing 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. The disclosures were reported earlier this month in Mississippi Today.


Huie's research notes indicate that he proposed an idea to the men's defense attorneys, J.J. Breland and John Whitten. He wanted their assistance in obtaining "the complete and truthful cooperation of every white man involved in the abduction and slaying," so that he might be able to make them all rich. “At this point both Mr. Whitten and I were under the assumption there had been four White men in the abduction-and-slaying party,” Huie wrote in his research notes. However, when Milam and Bryant alone showed up for interviews, they denied anyone else’s involvement. In his research notes, Huie repeatedly expressed doubts about the story they told him, especially after Elizabeth Wright, Till's great-aunt, described a 'third man' involved in the kidnapping and identified him as Milam's brother-in-law, Melvin Campbell. In a heavily redacted 2006 report by the FBI, investigators said Melvin Campbell told an unnamed person he was with Milam and Bryant the night Till was murdered. Huie never mentioned Wright’s claim of a third kidnapper in the Look article.


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