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Florida State University has acquired new documents it plans to add to the Emmett Till Archives.
The documents are a 33-page, single-spaced research memorandum by journalist William Bradford Huie and his correspondence with lawyer John Whitten Jr., who defended Tillâs killers, J. W. Milam and his half-brother, Roy Bryant. The papers were gifted to Florida State by Whittenâs granddaughter, Ellen Whitten.
âHuieâs article, which included a purported confession by the killers, shaped the perceptions of many white Mississippians and others who wanted to believe Till was a man-rapist who feared no one,â said Dr. Davis Houck, the Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies in the School of Communication at Florida State.
Houck established the Emmett Till Archives to serve as a focal point for research related to Tillâs story.
Till, 14, was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, in the summer of 1955. After an incident with a white storekeeper, he was kidnapped from his great aunt and uncleâs home, tortured, killed, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River.
âHuieâs âLookâ magazine article ran in January 1956 and continues to influence perceptions of Till and also the claim that only two men were involved in Tillâs kidnap, torture, and murder. In reality, at least eight men were involved, a fact carefully covered up by Huieâs lies,â said Houck. âThose lies are documented in this new collection.â
In June, Whitten delivered those papers to Houck, who said the universityâs Special Collections team digitized the documents, making them accessible to the public.
Houck has endowed a fund, in partnership with Special Collections, to support an annual lecture on Tillâs case such as the February 2024 lecture featuring the retired FBI agent, Dale Killinger, who spent three years investigating the murder as part of the Justice Department re-opening of the case.