The Blood of Emmett Till(50)
District Attorney Chatham cast his first witness in the role of the kindly old black retainer, calling him “Uncle Mose” and even “Old Man Mose” throughout his testimony. Very likely Chatham was playing to his jury, knowing undue respect shown a black man, beyond a kindly paternalism, would only hurt his case. But Wright’s presence and demeanor—he sat ramrod straight in the wooden chair—commanded attention, and the DA’s questions soon cut to the heart of the matter. “Now, Uncle Mose, after you and your family had gone to bed that night, I want you to tell the jury if any person or if one or more persons called at your home that night, and if they did what time was it?”
“About two o’clock,” Wright answered. “Well, someone was at the front door, and he was saying, ‘Preacher—Preacher.’ And then I said, ‘Who is it?’ And then he said, ‘This is Mr. Bryant. I want to talk to you and that boy.’?” When he opened the door, though he acknowledged that he could see neither of the men all that well, he recognized J. W. Milam.
The district attorney asked, “You know Mr. Milam, do you?”
“I sure do,” replied Wright.
“And what did you see when you opened the door?”
“Well, Mr. Milam was standing there at the door with a pistol in his right hand and he had a flashlight in his left hand.”
“Now stop there a minute, Uncle Mose,” instructed Chatham. “I want you to point out Mr. Milam if you see him here.”
Moses Wright stood up as tall as his five feet three inches would take him, pointed “a knobby finger at J. W. Milam,” and said, “There he is,” reported the Greenwood Commonwealth, a local white newspaper.4
The photographer Ernest Withers raised his camera and took a picture of the cotton farmer in his crisp, clean shirt and neat, thin tie, standing straight and pointing at Milam, who shifted nervously in his chair, puffing a small cigar. One of the wire services bought Withers’s roll of film on the spot and the photograph, carried by newspapers around the world, became an iconic image of courage.5
“And do you see Mr. Bryant in here?” asked Chatham. Wright pointed again.
“Uncle Mose,” Chatham continued, “do you see any man in this courtroom now who was with Mr. Milam that night at your house?”
“Yes, sir.”
The defense interrupted with an objection, to no avail.
“And will you point that man out, Uncle Mose?” asked Chatham.
“It was Mr. Bryant,” said Wright, rotating slightly and pointing at Milam’s brother-in-law again. Bryant betrayed no emotion, but Milam again shifted nervously in his chair.6 Only somewhat obscured by the passage of time, the significance of what had just occurred, arguably as significant as anything that would transpire in the courtroom, wasn’t lost on most of those watching the testimony. No doubt many thought that Wright had pronounced his own death sentence by identifying the two white men who had taken his nephew. He knew the risks as well as anyone. Murray Kempton wrote that Wright then “sat down hard against the chair-back with a lurch which told better than anything else the cost in strength to him of the thing he had done.”7
The district attorney’s next questions carefully took Wright through his account of the kidnapping, ending with his story of standing on the porch for twenty minutes, watching the darkness into which the boy his niece entrusted to his care had disappeared. “Now tell the Court and Jury when was the next time after they took Emmett Till away from your home that you saw him or his body,” Chatham finally directed.
Wright replied, “I saw him when he was taken out of the river.”8
After Wright explained that he had identified his nephew’s body in part by the silver ring on his finger, it was the defense counsel C. Sidney Carlton’s turn to cross-examine. Carlton and Wright had spoken three days earlier, of course, when Carlton, in an illegal attempt to prevent the moment that had just come and gone, had dropped by Wright’s tenant house to advise him that testifying against Milam and Bryant would be very bad luck, to put it mildly. He tried a less subtle approach in court. “Sidney Carlton roared at Moses Wright as if he were the defendant,” Kempton wrote, “and every time Carlton raised his voice like the lash of a whip, J. W. Milam would permit himself a cold smile.”9
Carlton berated Wright as though the older man were changing the facts of his story, which he wasn’t, and Wright calmly pointed out that he had not said any such thing. The defense attorney tried to insinuate that there had not been enough light in the cabin for Wright to identify Milam or Bryant, that his identification of them was mere speculation. He tried to fool Wright into testifying that Emmett Till’s own initials were on the silver ring rather than his father’s. He tried to suggest that since Wright had testified that he could not see the men putting the boy into the car and had not been able to see Till in the car as it pulled away, he could not prove that they had taken the boy. He attempted to shake Wright’s confidence in his identification of his nephew’s body by the river. Alternating between accusatory and indignant theatrics, however, Carlton never tripped up Wright, who stuck to answers like “That’s right” and “I didn’t say it” and “I sure did.” When Carlton’s frustrated questions became repetitive, Judge Swango sustained the prosecution’s objections, the defense lawyer gave in, and the judge announced a twenty-five-minute recess.10