In the news

Emmett Till's family gets autopsy report

By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO — A 464-page FBI report released Friday contains gruesome details from the autopsy of Emmett Till, but it is so highly redacted that it doesn't shed much light on the teen's killing, which helped galvanize the civil rights movement.

The report found that Till, killed in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman, died of a gunshot wound to the head and that he had broken wrist bones and skull and leg fractures.

When the 14-year-old's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in the summer of 1955, the report said, "the crown of his head was just crushed out ... and a piece of his skull just fell out."

The FBI report is part of an 8,000-page file investigators amassed during its three-year investigation into the killing, opened at the request of the district attorney in Greenwood, Miss. The local prosecutor recently announced that a grand jury had declined to return an indictment in the case.

Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who are deceased, were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury. They later confessed in a 1956 interview with Look magazine.

Nearly 100,000 people visited Till's open casket during a four-day public viewing in Chicago. A graphic photo of his face appeared in Jet magazine, sparking national outrage.

One of Till's cousins, Wheeler Parker Jr., said the family had hoped more people involved in the crime would acknowledge their roles during the investigation. Parker said he was not surprised, however, that no charges were filed.

"Most of the people are dead, so I guess they did the best they could," Parker said of the FBI.

Names, photos and other identifying information about living people were redacted from the report "out of privacy considerations," according to FBI spokeswoman Denise Ballew. Autopsy photos also were redacted "to protect the privacy interests of the surviving family members," Ballew said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The report, available online, says investigators found no evidence of Ku Klux Klan involvement in the crime.

Federal investigators reviewed the report with the family Thursday. Parker, who was there when Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant and also when he was kidnapped, said a report of a confession by Leslie Milam, a relative of Bryant and Milam, was the most satisfying part of the newly released documents.

"I was pleased to hear that one of the gentlemen confessed on his deathbed to his pastor ... that's kind of what I wanted to hear," Parker said.

A cousin of Till, Simeon Wright, 64, was present when Till was kidnapped and said the investigation proved the family never will have closure.

"There are some things that will never be resolved about the Till case until someone comes forward. Maybe they'll just take it to the grave," Wright said.

BRAVE OR CRAZY

Which was James Meredith?




The first photo is of him being escorted to class by federal marshals at Ole Miss in 1962. The second photo, which won a Pulitzer in 1967, is of him being shot by a sniper on a civil rights march in 1966.

And a separate question: What do you think of there being no photographs besides the one of the sheriffs in the whole book? Assuming the author meant that singularity to support the notion that the book is a meditation on one monumental image, did you like that strategy or did you wish to see more photos — other images from the time, images from the present? Would it have weakened or strengthened the book to have photos of each sheriff — and of Meredith — showing him as a kid, a husband, a father, a grandpa, etc.?

Comment on part one

By no means would I de-emphasize the physical violence that these perpetrators used against civil rights workers, blacks or other victims, and I'm not hardened to it. But sometimes what I found more shocking was the extent of efforts to keep blacks from registering to vote or voting at all, or forming or joining advocacy groups. Maybe I think of violence as the means of dumb brutes but the right to vote as a sanctity that the intelligent would revere and protect. And it's hard to understand that the justice system could essentially imprison you if you showed up to register (as was the case in Jim Middleton's jurisdiction). Withholding these rights required so much complicity through so many branches and levels of government. It required premeditation and planning. How does one consider himself an American or patriot and play the mental hopscotch required to justify these actions?

John Cothran

What do you think of John Cothran, the four-times-married manager at the Home Depot? Are there any clues in the book as to why he has such a problem with anger (we first see him destroying his car with a tire iron)? Is he going to lose his job (he seems to be losing his authority at the end of the chapter about him)? Is he racist (an all-white neighborhood was “a selling point” when he bought his house)? Sexist (one of his employees said so)? Is he any better than his grandfather, the man with his back turned? (His grandfather, John Ed Cothran, was hard to read until he said his county was the best because they didn’t even indict lynchers.)

Cleaning up the county

This topic is related to the previous topic. Could you see any actions of the characters separate from their racism? In other words, were you able to see good in what some of the sheriffs had done even though other things they had done were so bad? If you had been a black person in a segregationalist sheriff’s jurisdiction, would you be able to say that he had cleaned up the county or that he had always treated you fairly (as some of the people in the book said), or would you just see him as the wrong person to be in law enforcement?

Even though I felt somewhat sympathetic toward the sheriffs, I still had trouble thinking that they could do anything in their jobs that would deserve praise, because their racism more than made up for all the good they did.

Sympathetic characters

How did you feel about the people in the book? Could you identify with any of the segregationalists? In my opinion, the author did a good job of bringing out the humanity inherent in each character, even the Grand Dragon and his wife. It was not difficult to feel sorry for some of the characters who I think would have done greater things if they had been raised in a different environment.

The voice

At first, the narrative voice in this book really bothered me. I thought Hendrickson was injecting himself too much into the book. I wanted a book about the people in the photograph, not about the author’s search for them. But as I read, my view softened a bit as I realized how much good there still was in the book, and how strong and personable the author’s voice was.

I still think the book may have been stronger if it had been written in a more detached way, but I realize that this would have required a totally different approach, one that this author may not have been able to pull off.

Do any of you have any thoughts about the narrative voice? Is it just me, or did it bother any of you?

The picture

What did you think of the photograph? Was it worthy of a 300-page book? Was the author’s obsession with it justified, or did he go a little over the top? Do you believe that the men really were as they were portrayed, coincidentally like they were pictured in the photograph (e.g., the man with his back turned), or did the author’s view of the picture color his view of the men?

Christy's pick for April

"An Alphabet for Gourmets," by M.F.K Fisher, an outstanding collection of essays on food that translates into a philosophy about living well, about loved ones and memories.

A review from foliobooks.com:
"An Alphabet for Gourmets , published in 1948, is essentially a book of the most wonderful stories. No 'A is for Apple, B is for Borscht', but, in 'I is for Innocence', the touching tale of a widower's passion for fast food; in 'B is for Bachelors', recollections of the superb meals that the unattached male, bent on seduction, can pull out of his cupboard, and in 'Z is for Zakuski', a hymn to the pleasures of sharing Russian hors d'oeuvres with the famous opera singer Chaliapin. The recipes are just as exuberantly affectionate, ranging from Aunt Gwen's Fried Egg Sandwiches to Raspberries Romanov and the Perfect Martini. With wit, elegance and a sensuous turn of phrase, Fisher considers the alchemy of the perfect meal, and muses upon that eternal mystery, keenly debated by everyone from Galen to Woody Allen: do aphrodisiacs work?"

You may find this as a paperback or in a collection of Fisher's work, called "The Art of Eating." The essays are fairly quick reads and stand alone as content matter.

My plan would be to post comments for the first six essays, A-F, on April 22, and then four letters per day after that for the rest of the week. This may be a selection, then, that you can read very close to the due date, or follow along per day.

Warning: This may put you in a gourmet state of mind ...

The basic plots

The Internet Public Library has an interesting article called The “Basic” Plots in Literature. It has five different lists of basic plots, with one, three, seven, twenty, and thirty-six basic plots on the lists.