Louis Till

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Louis Till
BornFebruary 7, 1922
New Madrid, Missouri, U.S.
DiedJuly 2, 1945(1945-07-02) (aged 23)
Pisa, Italy
Cause of deathCapital punishment
Resting placeOise-Aisne American Cemetery, France
EducationArgo Community High School
Years active1943–1945
Spouse(s)
​
(m. 1940)​
ChildrenEmmett Till

Louis Till (February 7, 1922 – July 2, 1945) was an American soldier. He was the father of Emmett Till, whose murder in August 1955 at the age of 14 galvanized the Civil rights movement. A soldier during World War II, Louis Till was executed by the U.S. Army in 1945 after being found guilty of sexually assualting two white women and murdering a third. The circumstances of his death were little known even to his family until they were revealed after the trial of his son's murderers ten years later, which affected subsequent discourse on the death of Emmett Till. Novelist and essayist John Edgar Wideman claims Louis Till's conviction and punishment is questionable, presented the viewpoint that it may have been racially motivated and used as propaganda to justify his son's murder.

Life[]

Louis Till grew up an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri.[1] As a young man he worked at the Argo Corn Company and was an amateur boxer.[citation needed] At the age of 17, Till began courting Mamie Carthan, a woman of the same age. Her parents disapproved, thinking the charismatic Till was "too sophisticated" for their daughter. At her mother's insistence Mamie broke off their courtship but the persistent Till won out, and they married on October 14, 1940. Both were 18 years old.[2] Their first and only child, Emmett Louis Till, was born on July 25, 1941. Mamie left her husband soon after learning that he had been unfaithful. Louis, enraged, choked her to unconsciousness, to which she responded by throwing scalding water at him. Eventually Mamie obtained a restraining order against him. After he repeatedly violated this order, a judge forced Till to choose between enlistment in the Army and imprisonment. Choosing the former, he enlisted in 1943.[3]

Crime and death[]

While serving in the Italian Campaign, Till was arrested by military police, who suspected him and another soldier, Fred A. McMurray, of the murder of an Italian woman and the rape of two others, in Civitavecchia. After a short investigation, he and McMurray were court-martialed, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out at the United States Army Disciplinary Training Center north of Pisa on July 2, 1945.[4][5] He had been imprisoned alongside American poet Ezra Pound, who had been imprisoned for collaborating with the Nazis and Italian Fascists; he is mentioned in lines 171–173 of Canto 74 of Pound's Pisan Cantos:[6]

"Till was hung yesterday
for murder and rape with trimmings"

Till was buried in Row 4, Grave 73 of Plot E in Oise-Aisne American Cemetery.[7]

Aftermath[]

Confidential magazine headlines a story on Louis Till's execution in 1956

The circumstances of Till's death were not revealed to his family; Mamie Till was only told that her husband's death was due to "willful misconduct". Her attempts to learn more were comprehensively blocked by the United States Army bureaucracy.[5] The full details of Louis Till's crimes and execution only emerged ten years later. On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, after whistling for his own purposes near Carolyn Bryant, a local white woman, which was misconstrued as flirting. (Years later, a historian stated that Bryant disclosed to him that she had fabricated testimony that Till made verbal or physical advances towards her in the store.[8] However, the family of Bryant has disputed this claim.[9]) Her husband and brother-in-law abducted Till and tortured him to death, then threw his body into the river. Both were arrested a few days later, charged with and tried for first-degree murder, but were acquitted by an all-white jury in September 1955.

In October 1955, after the murder trial and acquittal gained international media attention, Mississippi senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis uncovered details about Louis Till's crimes and execution and released them to reporters. In November 1955, a grand jury declined to indict the two abductors for kidnapping Till, despite the fact that they had given a magazine interview in which they admitted to have kidnapped Till.[5]

The Southern media extensively covered the story: various editorials claimed that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the "Yankee" media had covered up, or lied about, the record of Emmett Till's father.[10] Many of these editorials specifically cited an article in Life magazine, which presented Louis Till as having died fighting for his country in France. According to historians, Life magazine was an exception rather than the rule, and no other "northern" media had lionized Pvt. Till or embellished his record; additionally, Life later published a retraction.[10] However, the impression was left among some southerners that the erroneous Life article was representative of the Northern media in general.[10] Several other Southern editorials went so far as to associate Emmett Till with his father's crimes. They implied that Emmett may have attempted rape after the fashion of his father, thereby justifying his murder.[11]

In 2016, notable African-American novelist and essayist John Edgar Wideman explored the circumstances leading up to and including the military conviction of Louis Till. In the book, Writing to Save a Life – The Louis Till File, Wideman examined the trial record from the US military United States v. Louis Till (CMZ288642).[12] In his review of the trial record, Wideman concluded that there may be questions to be raised of conclusions reached about Louis Till's criminal conduct, citing disproportionate punishment of African-American soldiers for rape or murder compared to white soldiers,[13][14][15] as well as laws at the time that failed to distinquish consenting relationships between African-American men and white women from rape.[16] He suggested Louis Till's conviction and punishment may have been racially motivated, drawn in and from the transcript. Wideman stated that he could not "rescue Louis Till from prison and the hangman".[17][18]

See also[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ Till-Mobley and Benson, pp. 14–15.
  2. ^ "American Experience . The Murder of Emmett Till . People & Events". Pbs.org. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
  3. ^ Till-Mobley and Benson, pp. 14–17.
  4. ^ Houck and Grindy, pp. 134–135.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c Whitfield, p. 117.
  6. ^ Pound, Ezra (1948). The Pisan Cantos. New York: New Directions. ISBN 978-0-8112-1558-9.
  7. ^ "Millions of Cemetery Records and Online Memorials". Find A Grave. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
  8. ^ Pérez-Peña, Richard (2017-01-27). "Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False". The New York Times.
  9. ^ Mitchell, Jerry (August 21, 2018). "NEWS Bombshell quote missing from Emmett Till tape. So did Carolyn Bryant Donham really recant?". Mississippi Clarion Ledger.
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b c Houck and Grindy, p. 136.
  11. ^ Houck and Grindy, p. 138.
  12. ^ Wideman, John Edgar. Writing to Save a Life. p. 88.
  13. ^ "Were Americans As Bad as the Soviets?". Der Spiegel. 2 March 2015.
  14. ^ Harrington, Carol (2010). Politicization of Sexual Violence: From Abolitionism to Peacekeeping. London: Ashgate. pp. 80–81. ISBN 0-7546-7458-4.
  15. ^ Schofield, Hugh (5 June 2009). "Revisionists challenge D-Day story". BBC. Retrieved 2013-06-08.
  16. ^ Urbina, Ian (11 October 2014). "The Challenge of Defining Rape". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 December 2015.
  17. ^ Wideman, John Edgar. Writing to Save a Life. p. 163.
  18. ^ Wideman, John (October 19, 2016). "A Black and White Case". Esquire. Esquire. Retrieved June 6, 2017.

References[]

  • Houck, Davis; Grindy, Matthew (2008). Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press, University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-934110-15-9
  • Till-Mobley, Mamie; (2003). The Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America, Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6117-2
  • Whitfield, Stephen (1991). A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till, JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-4326-6
  • Wideman, John Edgar (2016). Writing to Save a Life - The Louis Till File. New York, NY: Scribner. ISBN 978-1-5011-4728-9
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