Mississippi Today
The Emmett Till lynching has seen more than its share of liars. Is Tim Tyson one of them?
Award-winning historian Tim Tyson swears he heard admissions regarding Emmett Till’s lynching and another racial murder.
Admissions that weren’t recorded. Admissions that no one else heard. Admissions that he began hearing when he was 10.
“The question is not whether Tim Tyson fooled us once,” said Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.” “The question is whether he fooled us twice — and got away with it.”
Tyson has said he heard these admissions. He didn’t respond to requests for comments on the Till matter, but he has previously spoken to me, the FBI and others. All these are noted.
Tyson’s 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” lit the bomb that exploded around the world with this claim: The white woman at the center of the Emmett Till case, Carolyn Bryant Donham, had admitted she lied when she testified that he had grabbed her around the waist and uttered obscenities.
For some in the Till family, such as his cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker, the revelation represented the hope of clearing his cousin’s name. “I was elated,” he said.
He had longed to hear Donham say she lied about Till and planned to forgive her when she did, said the longtime pastor. “I was raised to believe deeply in forgiveness. If you don’t forgive, God won’t forgive you.”
For some in the Till family, the revelation raised hopes of a possible prosecution. His cousin, Deborah Watts, said there should be “a revisiting of the evidence in light of this revelation,” and Bennie Thompson, the Democratic congressman for the Mississippi Delta, called for an investigation, saying this represented “an opportunity to bring some justice to an innocent 14-year-old boy.”
For Till’s cousin, Ollie Gordon, the revelation sounded like a ruse. She saw no logic, she said, in Donham sharing such information with someone she hardly knew.
“I thought, ‘Oh, here we go. This man wants to sell his book,’” she said. “He knew if he put that lie out, that was going to help him sell the book.”
The fact that Tyson spoke to Donham but no one in the Till family reflects his mindset, she said. “If you want first-hand information, you go to the family. If you want to write what you want to write, you just bypass the family.”
What Tyson did to the Till family is nothing new, she said. “People have made money off the blood of Emmett Till and the backs of the Till family. They’re all chasing the dollar. They don’t care how they get it.”
Parker still remembers the night of Aug. 28, 1955, when two men with guns stormed the Mississippi Delta home where he and his cousin, Emmett Till, were staying. He and Till had come from Chicago to visit relatives.
It was past 2 a.m., “as dark as a thousand midnights,” Parker said, when he heard angry voices from the gloom.
A flashlight shone down the hall, and he shut his eyes, ready to hear the shots that would steal his life. He trembled as he prayed, his 16 years flitting across his mind, he said. “I knew I wasn’t right with God.”
He heard the men say they “wanted the fat boy” that had “done the talking” at Bryant’s Grocery.
Before long, their steps receded and then their voices. They were gone, and so was his cousin, Emmett, whom kidnappers hauled to a remote barn and began beating.
After the first light came, Parker fled Mississippi.
For 30 years, he wasn’t asked about what he had seen, but in the decades since, he has spoken out.
While visiting one school, a white student told Parker that Till had “misbehaved” inside the store and got what he deserved.
“What could he have done to deserve that?” Parker said he responded. “I know he didn’t do anything.”
He and another cousin said they never saw Till do or say anything to Donham inside the store. All Till did was whistle at her after she walked outside, they said.
Several nights later, Till’s murderers executed their own judgment, Parker said. “They killed him for what? A whistle?”
Till’s torture lasted much of the night, and witnesses heard him screaming past dawn. By the time the sun began to peek over the horizon, his cries became fainter.
Silence followed.
Till’s killers tried to bury their evil deeds by tying a 75-pound gin fan around his neck and tossing his body into water that fed into the Tallahatchie River.
The next day, when a deputy questioned two of the killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, they admitted they had kidnapped Till, but insisted they had released him unharmed. Days later, his body bobbed back to the river’s surface.
Sheriff Clarence Strider tried to bury Till’s brutalized body in a local cemetery to conceal the evil deed, but when his mother found out, she demanded his return to Chicago, where she opened his casket. “I wanted the world,” she said, “to see what I had seen.”
The lies continued after his funeral.
After arrests in the case, Bryant’s wife, Donham, told the defense lawyer that Till came into Bryant’s Grocery, grabbed her hand, asked for a date and said “goodbye” as he left.
But weeks later, the lawyer announced to reporters that Till had “mauled” Donham, and she echoed that lie from the witness stand. With the jury out of the courtroom, she claimed that Till had grabbed her around the waist, told her “you needn’t be afraid of me,” and said he had sex with white women before.
The sheriff got in on the lies, too. After Till was found, the sheriff told reporters the body had only been in the river a few days, released the body to a Black mortician and filled out a death certificate for Till.
But by the time the trial began, he had become a witness for the defense. He testified that the body had been in the water for at least 10 days and that he couldn’t tell the color of the skin — only that it was human. His words backed the incredulous defense claim that Till was still alive and that the NAACP had planted a cadaver in the river. (Five decades later, an autopsy and a DNA test proved that Till’s body was the one in his grave.)
The all-white jury acquitted the two men, despite believing they had killed Till, according to interviews the jurors gave Stephen Whitaker, who researched the case for his master’s thesis.
If those lies weren’t enough, journalist William Bradford Huie concealed the identities of other killers with his Look magazine article.
Huie told his editor that four men had taken part in the “torture-and-murder party,” but when the editor insisted on getting legal releases from all four, the murder party shrunk to two. (One trial witness, Willie Reed, identified four white men riding in the cab of the truck while three Black men held Till in the back.)
As for Huie, he had dreams of a Hollywood film and paid Till’s killers $3,150 for their rights.
The idea of Huie making “a deal with the murderers” angered Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, and her attorney sent a cease and desist letter to United Artists, said Till documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.
Huie’s 1956 article became gospel in the Till case until a new FBI investigation almost a half century later. Dale Killinger, who conducted that probe, said “the damage from those lies was deeper and broader than just Till’s murder.”
Three months before Till was killed, the Rev. George Lee was assassinated because he helped Black Mississippians register to vote in Belzoni. The sheriff claimed the shotgun pellets found in Lee’s face were loose fillings from his teeth.
Lamar Smith was gunned down in broad daylight on the courthouse lawn in Brookhaven. Despite the killer being covered in blood, the sheriff maintained there were no witnesses.
Killinger said these types of killings — and the lies that made them possible — “perpetuated generational trauma.”
By age 7, Tim Tyson was already spinning yarns.
He and his best friend “would lie there in the dark in the twin beds, and I would tell him stories, making them up as I went,” Tyson wrote in his memoir, “Blood Done Signed My Name.”
With each concocted tale, his friend cheered him on. “His fierce and unfeigned enthusiasm for these rambling odysseys,” Tyson wrote, “was like a drug to me.”
His friend even coined a name for them: “Tim’s Tall Tales.”
By the time Tyson telephoned me in 2008, he was already mesmerizing audiences with his stories of growing up in Oxford, North Carolina, and his memoir was being made into a movie.
Over lunch at Hal & Mal’s in Jackson, Tyson, who serves as a senior research scholar for the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, told me he landed an interview with Donham, the first interview I had ever heard of her giving to a historian. I congratulated him.
We talked about the Till case and much of the lore surrounding it.
Months later, we met in Jackson, he said he had finished talking with her. He told me her story mirrored her testimony, where she claimed Till had mauled her.
“You know she lied, don’t you?” I asked.
The statement surprised him, and afterward, I mailed him a copy of the statement she had made to the defense lawyer, where she mentioned nothing about Till grabbing her or talking about having sex with her.
He used that statement in his book and tried to talk with Donham again. She turned him down.
Much to my surprise, “The Blood of Emmett Till” hit the shelves in 2017 with the claim that Donham had admitted to Tyson that she had lied when she testified that Till had grabbed her around the waist and uttered obscenities.
News of the revelation spread like wildfire, first through top publications and television stations, before hitting Black radio, television, websites and word of mouth. “The Blood of Emmett Till” shot onto The New York Times Bestseller List and won the Robert F. Kennedy Award.
Calls arose for her prosecution, and the Justice Department began to look at the Till case again.
Questions soon surfaced. A source told me that Donham’s family was saying she didn’t recant, and I telephoned her then-daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, who said she was present the whole time and never heard the quotation Tyson attributed to Donham. Bryant said she had a copy of the transcript and the quote wasn’t in it.
When I reached out to Tyson in 2018, he confirmed he didn’t have the bombshell quote on tape, saying he was still setting up his recorder.
The book “Till” opens with Donham drinking coffee and serving Tyson a slice of pound cake. “She had never opened her door to a journalist or historian, let alone invited one for cake and coffee,” he wrote.
Bryant said Tyson actually brought the cake himself, and after the interview, he took it back with him.
Tyson told me his recorder wasn’t working when Donham said, “They’re all dead now anyway,” so he snatched up his notebook, began scribbling notes and heard her recantation.
But when the FBI began to investigate the matter, he gave investigators multiple accounts: that his recorder wasn’t working, that his recording was lost, that he didn’t realize he didn’t have her recantation on tape until much later.
Tyson wrote that Donham handed him a trial transcript and the memoir. Bryant disputed that, saying Donham never handed Tyson anything.
Tyson wrote that after Donham handed him the transcript, she said, “That part is not true.”
Tyson emailed me a photograph of his undated notes, which he shared with the FBI: “That pt wasn’t true. … 50 yrs ago. I just don’t remember. … Nothing that boy ever did could justify what happened to him.”
The way the quote appears in the “Till” book (italics show the words missing from the notes): “They’re all dead now anyway. … I want to tell you. Honestly, I just don’t remember. It was 50 years ago. You tell these stories for so long that they seem true, but that part is not true. … Nothing that boy ever did could justify what happened to him.”
Tyson told me Donham’s recantation took place in July 2008.
The problem with that date? He hadn’t met her yet, according to emails he wrote in August 2008 to her family.
Asked by email how he could have interviewed Donham in July 2008 when he had yet to meet her then, Tyson did not reply.
Tyson said Bryant didn’t take exception to “any of the facts” in the book, but was upset about people posting pictures of their house on the Internet.
Bryant told me she did object and shared an email with the FBI that she had sent Tyson, wanting to know why he was saying Donham had admitted she lied.
Bryant wrote Donham’s memoir, “I Am More Than a Wolf Whistle: The Story of Carolyn Bryant Donham,” and shared a copy with Tyson, who said in an August 2008 email that the work would prove “invaluable to history.”
Bryant said Tyson agreed to act as an editor for the book — a claim he told me was “bullsh–.”
But emails and edited versions of Donham’s memoir show Tyson edited the book, suggested revisions and rewrote the preface. The Department of Justice’s report also noted Tyson’s editing.
In a note Tyson put at the top of Donham’s memoir on March 6, 2009, he wrote, “Dear Marsha and Carolyn: I am sorry to take so long getting this back to you. I enjoyed reading it. But editing is hard work …
“Read over my edits and comments. I think they may suggest to you some of the broad outlines for another revision. When you finish another version — there will be several more, which is the nature of the publication process — you may feel free to send it to me. … You’ve done a great job thus far.”
He emailed Bryant and asked her to list him as “editor of the final project, since I am a professional scholar who has a boss (the dean) who wants to know how I spent my time and energy. ‘Editor’ can go on my annual report and suggest to the dean that I don’t just sit around and drink coffee and read the newspaper, regardless of what my wife and children might report to the contrary.”
Bryant believes it was “unethical” for him to serve as her editor and then take passages from her book to use in his own publication, she said. “He denied being my editor. It’s pretty damn obvious he was my editor.”
She said she is even angrier that Tyson recently made public a copy of her book, she said. “It appears to me that he is trying to inject himself into the Emmett Till story again by making sure he’s front and center.”
Tyson denied to the FBI that he ever agreed to assist Bryant in getting the memoir published, but in his first email to the family in August 2008, he wrote, “ think you should try to publish this book, and I will be glad to offer what help I can, including introducing you to my agent.”
At no point in Donham’s memoir, the two interviews she gave Tyson or the interviews she gave the FBI does she say she recanted. In fact, in her memoir, she doubled down on the claim that Till attacked her. She even made the head-scratching claim that when Till’s kidnappers asked her if he was the one who attacked her in the store, she refused to say — only for Till to identify himself to his kidnappers.
One of the biggest questions the FBI had for Tyson was why, after Donham recanted, he never asked her to repeat her statement or quiz her about this contradiction. He told the FBI that he didn’t want to interrupt the “flow” of the conversation, but he interrupted her at other times to clarify points, the Justice Department noted in its report closing the Till case.
Tyson had other opportunities in his editing of the memoir. He wrote many suggestions and questions about the book, but he never asked Donham a single question about what he claimed was her recantation.
The FBI asked Tyson why he failed to share this important evidence with authorities for nearly a decade, and he replied that he thought the case was closed.
When investigators interviewed Tyson, “rather than obtaining other corroborating evidence to support Tyson’s claim that … [Donham] offered a recantation,” the report said, “investigators instead identified numerous inconsistencies in Tyson’s account that raised questions about the credibility of his account of the interviews.”
In closing the Till case on Dec. 6, 2021, the Justice Department said, “Tyson’s account lacks credibility,” citing his “shifting explanations to FBI investigators …, the questionable nature of his relationship with [Donham], and his financial motives.”
Sixteen months later, Donham died — and with it any hope of a prosecution in the Till case.
After discovering these things about “The Blood of Emmett Till,” I reached out to a historian, who told me, “You know there were problems with Tyson’s previous book.”
That was news to me. Researcher Brandon Arvesen and I dove deeper into “Blood Done Sign My Name.”
The book centers on the May 11, 1970 killing of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old Black man killed by members of the Teel family. After his slaying, Robert and Larry Teel turned themselves in to authorities, who moved them from a local jail to a prison in Raleigh 40 miles away, according to newspaper accounts.
The book opens with Tyson claiming his 10-year-old friend, Gerald Teel, told him in person on the evening of May 12, 1970, that his father, Robert, and his brother, Roger, shot “a n—–” last night in Oxford, North Carolina.
One problem with this claim? The Teel family may have already left town for safety reasons to Mount Olive, more than 100 miles away, according to newspaper reports.
The Feb. 21, 1971, Durham Herald-Sun newspaper says Teel’s sons “did not return to school in Oxford after May 11. Instead they were enrolled in classes in Mount Olive where they finished out the term.”
Tyson did not reply to calls and emails regarding this question.
This is far from the only issue with the book. “Name” has some faulty footnotes, wrong details, wrong dates for events and wrong quotations.
For instance, Tyson quoted Black businessman James Gregory as saying, “Even some black folks want to believe we’ve made a lot of progress in race relations, but deep down they know things are bad.”
Tyson attributed the quote to the May 29, 1970, issue of the Raleigh News and Observer. The actual quote from Gregory, published a day earlier, said, “Outsiders are responsible for all of this.”
During their murder trial, Robert and Larry Teel claimed self-defense.
Robert Teel’s stepson, Roger Oakley, became the defense’s surprise witness, claiming he was the one who fired the fatal shot, but accidentally, of course. A jury acquitted the Teels, and a Raleigh News and Observer editorial called the verdict a “sham and mockery.”
Thirteen years later, Tyson interviewed the father, Robert Teel, for a master’s thesis.
The Teel family shared what they say is a handwritten contract that Tyson signed and gave them at the time: “In exchange for above cooperation, Mr. Tyson will, upon graduation from law school, represent Mr. [Robert] Teel as his legal counsel in a legal action of Mr. Teel’s choice, without retainer’s fee, on a 50%/50% contractual basis, … immediately upon graduation to perform above legal action in a prompt manner.” (Tyson has a doctorate in history, but his Duke University biography makes no mention of law school.)
After Tyson wrote “Blood Done Sign My Name,” he donated a copy of his master’s thesis to the Thornton Library in Oxford and said in the author’s note that someone had torn out several pages about Marrow’s killing, “presumably to prevent other people from reading them.”
The thesis has since disappeared from the library, but Mississippi Today has obtained a copy of the entire thesis, including the missing pages, which differs from “Name.”
In his thesis, Tyson wrote that Marrow “walked down to Freeman’s store and returned with a six pack of Country Club Malt Liquor,” but in “Name,” Tyson wrote that Marrow went to Teel’s convenience store to get a big Pepsi and something to eat.
Robert Teel ran a car wash, according to newspaper articles at the time. He also operated a barber shop, a coin-operated laundromat and a cycle shop, according to the Feb. 16, 1971, Oxford Public Ledger. The newspaper mentions nothing about a convenience store, and Teel’s son, Larry, said they never had one.
As with his Till book, Tyson didn’t interview the victim’s family.
When Till’s cousin, Parker, found out that Donham, the white woman at the center of the case, denied she had ever recanted and there was no recording, his heart sank, he said. “It was a blow.”
Tyson “did some big lying,” said Parker, whose book with Chris Benson, “A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice for My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till,” was published in January. “He said he had a recorder, but everything is missing.”
Tyson has defended the recantation, telling The New York Times that he took detailed notes: “Carolyn started spilling the beans before I got the recorder going. I documented her words carefully. My reporting is rock solid.”
Till’s cousin, Gordon, said for the author to make things right to the Till family, he would need to apologize for the harm he has caused them. “He would have to admit he fabricated this,” she said.
Tyson did not reply to a request for comment on the Till family’s remarks.
After the release of his Till book in 2017, CBS This Morning interviewed Tyson about the bombshell quote from Donham, whom he suggested had recanted because she was remorseful.
“We’re not punished for our sins; we’re punished by our sins,” he told Gayle King. “Nobody ever gets away with anything.”
Researcher Brandon Arvesen contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Despite bribery charges, Mississippi prosecutor, other officials can remain in office
Sweeping corruption charges have rocked local government in Mississippi’s capital city, with potentially significant implications for the local legal system.
During arraignments on Thursday, federal prosecutors charged Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Jackson City Councilmember Aaron Banks with a string of bribery and corruption charges.
All three pleaded not guilty and were released pending trial.
The charges stem from an undercover sting operation in which FBI agents posed as real estate developers and allegedly provided bribes to win the support of local officials.
Former Jackson City Councilmember Angelique Lee and local businessman Sherik Marve’ Smith previously pleaded guilty to corruption charges as part of plea agreements.
All three officials charged Thursday have influence over the local legal system in Mississippi’s largest city and county. Owens is the county’s prosecutor, with sweeping power over felony prosecutions in a county that has struggled with violent crime, a backlog of cases and a troubled jail.
Lumumba appoints the Jackson police chief. Lumumba has fought against the creation of a state-controlled police force with jurisdiction within certain areas of the city, as well as a special state-controlled court for those areas. His beleaguered legal position may only strengthen the efforts of statewide leaders to exert more control over local policy within the state’s capital city.
Banks, as a councilmember, votes to confirm or reject Lumumba’s appointments, including police chief. The city council also sets the budget for city government departments, including the police department and the municipal court. The Jackson City Council can also impose other policies, including a controversial youth curfew policy that came earlier this year.
Can Owens, Lumumba and Banks remain in office while facing criminal charges?
Yes. While the Mississippi constitution forbids anyone who has been convicted of almost all felonies from holding elected office, nothing requires a person to resign or take a leave of absence from their job before a conviction.
Owens on Thursday indicated no plans to resign. Instead, he said he would fight what he called a “flawed FBI investigation” and said, “I’m going to get back to protecting Hinds County and being the district attorney that you elected me to be.”
Owens’ predecessor, Robert Shuler Smith, faced multiple state criminal prosecutions during his tenure in elected office and never resigned. None of the charges brought against him by then-Attorney General Jim Hood ended in a conviction.
In 2016, then-state Rep. Nick Bain filed a bill that would have created a process to remove local officials from office following an indictment, but that bill never advanced.
The state constitution allows people convicted of manslaughter and state or federal tax crimes to hold elected office.
What happens if Owens resigns?
Owens was most recently elected in 2023 for a four-year term that began January 2024 and will run through the end of 2027. If he’s not convicted before then, he can complete the entire term and even qualify for reelection again. If he were to be convicted or plead guilty before the end of 2027, he would be removed from office.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel P. Jordan set a trial date for Jan. 6, but delays in criminal cases are common.
If Owens resigns or is removed with more than six months remaining in his term, Gov. Tate Reeves will appoint someone to replace him until a special election can occur. Special elections to replace a district attorney generally occur as needed in November of each year.
If Owens were to resign now, that means a gubernatorial appointee would serve as Hinds County’s district attorney for a year until a special election in 2025. Any qualifying candidate could run in the special election to fulfill the term, including the gubernatorial appointee.
If Owens were to resign or be removed from office with less than six months remaining in his term, the governor would simply appoint someone to fulfill the term and the winner of the regularly scheduled general election would take office at the beginning of the next term.
What would happen if Lumumba or Banks were to resign or be removed from office?
The current terms of both Lumumba and Bank conclude next year, with municipal general elections set for June and new terms beginning in July.
Lumumba said on Thursday that he will continue to run for reelection. Banks declined to answer questions about whether he intends to remain in office or to seek another term.
If either Lumumba or Banks were to resign with less than six months remaining in their term, state law requires that the Jackson City Council would replace either with interim appointments who would serve the remaining months of the terms.
If either man were to resign or be removed before the end of 2024, the City Council would have to order a special election to fill the vacant posts.
Can voters recall elected officials in Mississippi?
Mississippi does have an obscure and very roundabout recall process, but only for county officials, despite several unsuccessful efforts to expand the law. State Sen. Jeremy England, a Republican from the Gulf Coast, has filed some of those bills, and said he did not think a district attorney could be recalled under the current law, but they could have been recalled under a bill he has filed before.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1914
Nov. 12, 1914
Civil rights leader William Monroe Trotter led a delegation that confronted President Woodrow Wilson.
Raised in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, Trotter had more education than the president. He had graduate and postgraduate degrees from Harvard University, where he became the first Black member of Phi Beta Kappa.
“New Englanders liked to talk as if ‘the Negro problem’ afflicted only the South,” The New Yorker wrote of him, “but Trotter looked around his beloved Boston and saw segregation in the city’s churches, gyms, and hospitals. This ‘fixed caste of color’ meant that ‘every colored American would be a civic outcast, forever alien in public life,’ he wrote.”
In 1901, he started The Guardian with the motto: “For every right, with all thy might.” The newspaper called itself “an organ which is to voice intelligently the needs and aspirations” of Black Americans.”
Both he and his wife, Deenie, published The Guardian each Saturday, only missing two issues: “The Trotters had no children and did not want any; The Guardian was their child.”
In their pages, Trotter leveled vicious attacks against Booker T. Washington and his accommodation policies, calling him “the Great Traitor.” When Trotter began to question Washington at a gathering of 2,000, a fight broke out, which became known as “the Boston riot,” and he was arrested, spending 30 days in jail. The wealth his family once enjoyed turned to poverty because of the money he sunk into his newspaper.
“It has cost me considerable money, but I could not keep out of it,” he wrote. “I can now feel that I am doing my duty and trying to show the light to those in darkness and keep them from at least being duped into helping in their own enslavement.”
He turned his attention to political candidates he felt would support African Americans and began backing Wilson, whom he met and shook hands with in 1912 “with great cordiality.”
A year later, he and Ida B. Wells and other civil rights leaders expressed dismay over the reinstitution of Jim Crow and even shared a chart that showed which federal offices had begun separating workers by race.
In 1914, Trotter and other Black leaders appeared at the White House with 20,000 signatures, demanding an end to Jim Crow in federal offices. The leaders told Wilson they felt betrayed because they had supported him in the election, and he had since reinstituted segregation in the federal government that included separate toilets and dismissed high-level Black appointees.
“Only two years ago you were heralded as perhaps the second Lincoln,” Trotter said, “and now the Afro-American leaders who supported you are hounded as false leaders and traitors to their race.”
He reminded the president — who had been busy championing his “New Freedom” program to restore fair-labor practices — that he had promised to aid Black Americans in “advancing the interest of their race in the United States. … Have you a ‘New Freedom’ for white Americans and a new slavery for your Afro-American fellow citizens? God forbid!”
Wilson responded that “segregation is not humiliating but a benefit” and that he had put the practice back in place because of friction between Black and white clerks. Trotter challenged this claim, calling Jim Crow humiliating to Black workers.
Wilson stuck to his guns, telling Trotter that if he and other Black Americans think “you are being humiliated, you will believe it.” The exchange lasted 45 minutes, and the president challenged Trotter’s “tone” as offensive: “You have spoiled the whole cause for which you came.”
The civil rights leader responded, “I am pleading for simple justice. If my tone has seemed so contentious, why has my tone been misunderstood?”
The argument landed on the front page of The New York Times. During World War I, the State Department refused to give Trotter a passport to Paris. To get around the restriction, he took a job as a cook on a freighter to France, and when he began reporting on the plight of Black soldiers, French newspapers shared his reporting, and he spoke there about discrimination against African Americans.
When Trotter returned home, he was welcomed by 2,000 supporters. He unsuccessfully championed a section added to Wilson’s 14 Points for peace that would say, “The elimination of civil, political, and judicial distinctions based on race or color in all nations for the new era of freedom everywhere.”
Trotter helped found the Niagara Movement, a forerunner of the NAACP. The civil rights organization adopted his proposal to address segregated transportation as a grievance, but the group rejected his proposal to make lynching a federal crime.
He championed cases the NAACP was slower to pursue, including Jane Bosfield, a Black woman was told she could only work for a Massachusetts hospital if she ate separately from her white fellow workers.
When the racist movie, ‘The Birth of a Nation’, appeared on a screen, the national NAACP tried to raise money for a rival film to counter those lies, but Trotter believed in direct action. His protests succeeded in shutting down a play that was the basis for the movie, which depicted Klansmen as heroes. After failing to halt the debut of the film in Boston, he teamed up with Roman Catholics to get a revival showing canceled.
His tactics were later used by the modern civil rights movement “to integrate lunch counters, buses, schools, and other essential spaces,” The New Yorker wrote. And his mindset “incubated the politics of Malcolm X and of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.”
A multicultural center at the University of Michigan bears Trotter’s name, and his first home in Dorchester is now a National Historic Landmark. He made the list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
DOJ lawsuit: Mississippi Senate paid Black attorney half what white colleagues made
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Senate discriminated against a Black attorney by paying her about half of what her white colleagues were paid for doing the same job, the U.S. Justice Department says in a lawsuit it filed Friday.
“Discriminatory employment practices, like paying a Black employee less than their white colleagues for the same work, are not only unfair, they are unlawful,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Kristie Metcalfe worked as a staff attorney for the Mississippi Senate’s Legislative Services Office from December 2011 to November 2019. Attorneys for the nonpartisan office write bills and handle other legal questions for the 52 senators. Many of them stay on the job for decades.
The Senate office employed only white attorneys for at least 34 years before Metcalfe was hired, and she was the only Black attorney on staff during her time there, the lawsuit said.
Metcalfe’s starting salary was $55,000, while other Senate staff attorneys were paid $95,550 to $121,800, according to the lawsuit. The other attorneys received pay raises about a month after Metcalfe was hired, making their salary range $114,000 to $136,416. Metcalfe did not receive a raise then.
The current governor, Republican Tate Reeves, presided over the Senate as lieutenant governor from January 2012 until January 2020 — most of the time Metcalfe worked for the Senate.
The Associated Press sought comment about the lawsuit Friday from Reeves and current Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who is also a Republican.
“We do not comment on pending litigation,” said the current secretary of the Senate, Amanda Frusha White, who works for Hosemann.
Metcalfe’s salary remained $40,000 to $60,000 less than her lowest-paid white colleague during her years on the job, the lawsuit said. It also said the Senate hired another attorney, a white man, in December 2018 and set his salary at $101,500, which was $24,335 more than Metcalfe was being paid at the time.
Metcalfe and the new attorney both had eight years’ experience practicing law, although the new attorney had not yet worked for the Legislature. They were assigned the same types of work for the Senate, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said Metcalfe complained about the pay disparity to with then-Sen. Terry Burton, a Republican. As the Senate president pro tempore, Burton was chairman of the Rules Committee, which sets staff salaries. He denied Metcalfe’s request to equalize her salary with that of her new colleague, the lawsuit said. She resigned about 11 months later.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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