Were blacks involved in the death of Emmett Till?
I never heard anything about this until I read the story in my paper (LA Times) recently.
Johnny B. Thomas grew up with the story of Emmett Till. It filtered down to children here like a dark fable, one that ended with a black boy wrapped in barbed wire at the bottom of a river.
Thomas didn’t see himself as part of that story. Then, when he was 11 or 12, someone told him the old rumor about his father, Henry Lee Loggins.
The summer of 1955, when the 14-year-old Till was murdered for reportedly whistling at a white woman, was also the summer Loggins disappeared. Loggins worked for J.W. Milam, one of the white men who confessed to killing Till. People here have long believed Loggins was present at the crime and spirited out of town so he could not testify at Milam’s murder trial. (more—may need to register…)
March 29th, 2006 at 2:18 am
im sorry to hear about emmett he sounds like a nice kid
March 29th, 2006 at 10:29 am
I heard about this a few years ago. I think it was 20/20 or one of the other new magazines that found Loggins and asked him if he had anything to do with the murder. He claimed that he was not on the truck and did not go into the house and help them find Emmett Till. They also talked to people near the house at the time that Till was kidnapped and they say he was there and that was not the 1st time he had helped his boss hurt blacks. I don’t know if he was there or not but tacit consent is a hell of a thing. We as a people are guilty of it all too much. Africans helped put other blacks on the slave ships. Black folks told on Malcolm, Martin, Marcus and Mandela. And now we sit back and allow drug dealers to run our neighborhoods. Until we stand up (at the cost of our own lives) and say no this is not right and I am not going to take it any more we will always be in a perpetual state of emergency.