Carolyn bryant interview 60 minutes

The murder trial of Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. Milam laid bare the racism that ruled Mississippi. When the murder trial of Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. Milam opened in Sumner, Mississippi, on a steamy September morning in , few realized the town would be forever linked to the brutal slaying of Emmett Till, a year-old African American boy from Chicago.

Sumner, the Tallahatchie County seat, was in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

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The town's slogan was emblazoned on a prominent sign that read, "A good place to raise a boy," an irony not lost on the scores of national white and black reporters covering the case. Photos of the sign accompanied news stories about the murder of a boy who did not live to be a man. Many whites from the area resented the influx of Northerners in town to cover the trial and filled the courtroom in support of the defendants.

Black spectators sat in the back of the courtroom, and black reporters were relegated to a card table off to the side. When the black Detroit Congressman Charles Diggs arrived to watch the proceedings, Strider at first refused him entry until the presiding judge told him he had to let in a U. In turn, Strider relegated Diggs to the black press table.

Every morning, Strider would pass the group with a cheery, "Hello, niggers. Racist jokes made the rounds: "Wasn't it just like a nigger, to try and cross the Tallahatchie River with a gin fan around his neck.

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The most dramatic testimony came from some unlikely heroes, two sharecroppers who were threatened with death if they testified. Moses Wright, Emmett's great uncle, was the prosecution's best eyewitness. He stood up in court and pointed out Milam and Bryant as the men who came to his home and took Emmett at gunpoint.