Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, joins Ronald Collins, author of Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial, to discuss the tragedy of Emmett Till’s murder, the shocking story of the trial that followed, and its impact on the Civil Rights Movement. Thomas Donnelly, chief content officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Ronald Collins is the editor in chief of First Amendment News. Before he retired, he was the Harold S. Shefelman Scholar at the University of Washington Law School and prior to that was a scholar at the Washington, D.C. office of the Newseum’s First Amendment Center. In addition to the nine books that he co-authored with David Skover, he is the editor of Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Free Speech Reader and co-author with Sam Chaltain of We Must Not Be Afraid to Be Free. He also authored Nuanced Absolutism: Floyd Abrams and the First Amendment. His latest book is Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial.
Janai Nelson is president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. She formerly served as associate director-counsel and as a member of LDF’s litigation and policy teams. She has also served as interim director of LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute and in various other leadership capacities at LDF. Prior to joining LDF, Nelson was associate dean for Faculty Scholarship and associate director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law where she was also a full professor of law and served on the law school’s Senior Leadership Team.
Thomas Donnelly is chief content officer at the National Constitution Center. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- Ronald K. L. Collins, Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial (2024)
- H.R.55 - Emmett Till Antilynching Act
- President Joseph Biden,Remarks by President at Signing of H.R. 55 (March 29, 2022)
- Joy-Ann Reid, Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America (2024)
- Valerie Russ, “A former Temple U law professor speaks about how the Emmett Till murder trial shaped the Civil Rights Movement," The Philadelphia Inquirer (April 11, 2024)
- Liz Fields, “The story behind Nina Simone’s protest song, 'Mississippi Goddam,'” PBS (Jan. 14, 2021)
- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley, National Monument
Excerpt from Interview: Janai Nelson emphasizes Brown v. Board decision's impact, the subsequent vague desegregation guidelines of Brown 2, the resulting violence, and parallels to today's challenges in racial equality.
Janai Nelson: Ron already noted that Brown versus Board of Education was decided on May 17th in 1954. So we know that the nation had already begun to recognize that separate but equal was not consonant with the 14th Amendment and the concept of equal protection. So there was already an awakening that the way in which we were operating along racial lines was not sustainable. We also know that there was massive resistance. Nearly a year to the date of the Brown decision, another court case was required, Brown 2, that was decided in 1955, the same year, that said these recalcitrant school districts must move forward with desegregation with all deliberate speed. That is, you know, in many ways, a very hollow phrase that doesn't provide any real timeline for Southern school districts to engage in the important project of desegregation.
And this sort of lymphatic instruction by the Supreme Court allowed for violence to continue against black students who were integrating these spaces. I think also created the backlash and the empowerment of people to continue violence outside of the school context. And we see that happening with Emmett Till, right? This 14-year-old child who was penalized for, again, violating the mores and norms that were imposed on black people and their behaviors. So that was the very volatile condition of the South and of the country at large at that time. It was a moment of real transition for us as a democracy.
And so it's not surprising that, you know, these events would be met with the kind of forceful reaction that they were. I think black people were also feeling more empowered about their rights and feeling that they could engage in some resistance of their own in a form of protest like Mamie Till Mobley did here that was just so searing and powerful. So it was a volatile time, but not terribly unlike a time that we're in right now where we see so many shifts happening and part of it resulting from ongoing violence visited upon black communities.
Excerpt from Interview: Ronald Collins highlights Dr. TRM Howard's role in the Emmett Till case, providing a safe haven for witnesses and press, and uncovering the sheriff's collusion with the defense, vital details obscured over time.
Ronald Collins: If a book hadn't been written about Dr. TRM Howard, I would have written it. I mean, this guy is so, so important. And, you know, sometimes the people in the background are the most, the ones that are really most important. You know, I mean, I sometimes think, you know, the fish take the water for granted, but it's really important. He's the water. A very successful and well-to-do African-American doctor. He has a big home with a big fence, all right? So when Mamie Till Bradley came to Mississippi, where did she stay? When the reporters for Jet Magazine and others, the Chicago Defender, where did they stay, right? When witnesses needed to be protected, where did they stay? They didn't stay in any hotel or any place near the courthouse, that's for sure. They stayed at the home of Dr. TRM Howard, all right?
That was essential. That was essential. And it really becomes this kind of communication center, all right? Medgar Evers is there along with people from the African-American press, and they're going out in the fields trying to find witnesses, all right? And they're finding out what the sheriff has done. You know, I mean, the sheriff, the trial lasted, I mean, it took the jury 67 minutes, which included a soda break, to find the defendants not guilty of murder. Remember, they weren't charged with kidnapping. They were, I mean, they weren't prosecuted for kidnapping. But the real evil was the sheriff. The sheriff had, he testified for the defense, number one. He took the witnesses that they were able to get and moved them to another jurisdiction so they couldn't testify. He lies on and on and on again.
He says that the body was so badly received when they first saw it that they couldn't identify it. He didn't know if it was a boy or a man or a black person or a white person, what have you. I mean, it was just one lie after another. He's working with the defense. I recently did a program with Jason Downs, who was one of the main lawyers in the Freddie Gray case. And he told me, you know, he's done all of these criminal cases. You don't see a sheriff testifying for the defense. You just don't see that. And so that was such a, so much of an evil. The point is that I'm trying to get at is here, first of all, Dr. TRM Howard, what he does is really important because it allows the press to be there. And they did find, they did come up with some witnesses that they were able to bring to court. And so that's really important.
I think the other thing is, is that, and this is one of the things, the closing arguments in the transcript, which had been missing for a half a century, had never been recorded by the court reporter. I mean, it's just unusual, highly unusual. The way I was able to reconstruct those in some summary form was primarily by going to the African-American press from the time. I mean, those stories had been lost for decades. And yet when you kind of go at them piece by piece by piece and you put them together, all of a sudden, the closing arguments, which were horrific in terms of what the defense had made. So this was a trial that had to, it's the most seminal document from the time, but it needed to be brought to life. And so that's what I attempted to do here in Tragedy on Trial.
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