Louis Till

Louis Till (February 7, 1922 – July 2, 1945) was an African American GI during World War II. After enlisting in the United States Army following trial for domestic violence against his estranged wife Mamie Till, and having chosen military service over jail time, Louis Till was Court-Martialed on two counts of rape and one count of murder during the Italian Campaign. He was found guilty and was executed by hanging at Aversa.[1] Louis Till was the estranged father of Emmett Till, whose murder in August 1955 at the age of 14 galvanized the civil rights movement. The circumstances of Louis Till's death remained largely unknown until they were revealed after the highly controversial acquittal of his son's murderers ten years later. Till's guilt would be called into question many years later via an analysis by John Edgar Wideman. In a book documenting every court martial and execution of GIs in North Africa and Europe during World War II, United States Army Colonel French MacLean called Wideman's research and conclusions into question. According to Colonel MacLean, even though justice was not done to Emmett Till's murderers, the documents kept on the case by Judge Advocate General's Corps suggest that justice was in fact done to Private Louis Till.

Louis Till
BornFebruary 7, 1922
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, U.S.
DiedJuly 2, 1945(1945-07-02) (aged 23)
Aversa, Campania, Kingdom of Italy
Cause of deathExecution by hanging
Resting placeOise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E, France
EducationArgo Community High School
Years active1943–1945
Criminal statusExecuted
Spouse
​
(m. 1940)​
ChildrenEmmett Till
Conviction(s)Premeditated murder
Rape (2 counts)
Criminal penaltyDeath

Early life

Louis Till grew up an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri.[2]: 14–15  As a young man he worked at the Argo Corn Company and was an amateur boxer.[3]

At age 17, Till began courting Mamie Carthan, a girl of the same age. Her parents disapproved, thinking the charismatic Till was "too sophisticated" for their daughter. At her mother's insistence, Mamie broke off their courtship, but the persistent Till won out, and they married on October 14, 1940 when both were 18. [4] Their only child, Emmett Louis Till, was born on July 25, 1941. Mamie left her husband soon after learning that he had been unfaithful. Louis, enraged, choked her to unconsciousness, to which she responded by throwing scalding water at him. Eventually Mamie obtained a restraining order against him. After he repeatedly violated this order, a judge forced Till to choose between enlistment in the United States Army and imprisonment. Choosing the former, he enlisted in 1943.[2]: 14–17 

Criminal charges and death

While serving in the Italian Campaign, Till learned to speak the Neapolitan dialect of the Italian language fluently.[5]

On 19 July 1944,[6] Till was arrested by Military Police, who suspected him and two fellow soldiers of the murder of Anna Zanchi, an Italian woman, and the rape of two others in Civitavecchia. Pvt. James Thomas, Jr., was granted immunity in exchange for testimony against Pvts. McMurray and Till.[7]: 196  Thomas testified that Till and McMurray took 20 minutes to plan the home invasion and had sex with the two women. Military Police investigators had found an envelope at the crime scene addressed to Pvt. McMurray. Under interrogation, Pvt. McMurray confessed and stated that Till said, "Everybody follow me: If anybody turns back I'll blast him." McMurray also testified that he begged Till not to shoot, but that Till had fired a shot into the house which killed Zanchi.[8]

On 17 February 1945, the Court Martial of Privates Till and McMurray began before a panel of seven military judges at Livorno. Both soldiers, who raised no objection to a joint trial, stood accused of one count of murder and two counts of carnal knowledge, both of which violated the 92nd Article of War. 2nd Lieutenant Mervin R. Samuel appeared for the prosecution as Trial Judge Advocate, while First Lieutenant John W. Wynn appeared as Defense Counsel for both soldiers.[9]

Fellow African-American GI Private James Thomas, Jr. testified for the prosecution and described witnessing the 27 June 1944 assault, armed robbery, and attempted murder of United States Navy sailor James E. Carter. Private Thomas identified Till as Carter's assailant and alleged that Till had shouted, "I'm going to kill the motherfucking son of a bitch!" Till allegedly attempted to shoot Carter with his own side arm. Carter managed, however, to jump into a jeep and flee the scene after the gun jammed. According to Pvt. Thomas, the shot that later killed Anna Zanchi had been fired from the M1911 pistol that Louis Till had stolen that morning from the U.S. Navy Serviceman.[10]

Italian witness John Masi testified about witnessing the home invasion and assault against all three women on the evening following the sailor's assault. He testified that Louis Till had fired the shot that killed Anna Zanchi and had told him personally, "Get in the house, or I'll blow your head off!" Both surviving rape victims also gave evidence, but stated that their assailants wore masks and they accordingly declined to identify them as the defendants. Pvt. Thomas did, however, identify Louis Till as having fired the shot that killed Anna Zanchi.[11]

Despite being informed of their right to do so, both soldiers elected not to give evidence in their own defense. As their defense counsel, Lt. Wynn objected to the introduction into evidence of Private McMurray's confession, alleging that it had been made involuntarily. The objection was overruled by Law Member Colonel Roger W. Whitman, who instructed the jury, however, that the confession could only be used as evidence against Private McMurray.[12]

Lt. Wynn also objected in vain to the fact that Pvt. Louis Till's involvement was only established by the uncorroborated testimony of an alleged accomplice. After this objection was also overruled by Col. Whitman, the United States military jury voted unanimously to convict both defendants and sentenced them to death by hanging.[13]

As was the usual practice within the United States Army during the Italian Campaign, both defendants were transferred to the United States Army Disciplinary Training Center near Aversa to await review of their trial and sentencing by the Judge Advocate General's Corps.[14]

On 18 April 1945, Col. Claudius O. Wolfe ruled that the trial record was sufficient to support a verdict of guilty. Regarding the two surviving victims inability to recognize their attackers, Col. Wolfe wrote, "The place, time, and circumstances were such as to exclude reasonable doubt as to their identity."[15]

In support of similarly confirming the verdict and sentences, the Judge Advocate General's Corps cited the relevant passage of A Manual for Courts-Martial, U.S. Army, "A conviction may be based on uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice, but such testimony is of doubtful integrity and is to be considered with great caution."[16]

Private Louis Till was hanged immediately following his co-defendant Private Fred A. McMurray at Aversa July 2, 1945. Multiple photographs were taken to document before, during, and after both executions and are still in existence.[17]: 134–135 [18][19]

Before his execution, Till had been imprisoned alongside highly influential American free verse poet Ezra Pound, who was imprisoned for treason and collaboration with both the Nazis and Italian Fascists. Till is accordingly mentioned in lines 171–173 of Canto 74 of Pound's Pisan Cantos:[20]

"Pisa, in the 23rd year of the effort in sight of the Tower
And Till was hung yesterday
for murder and rape with trimmings".

While Pound and Till had met briefly at the MTO DTC near Pisa, the American poet was taking artistic license, as Pvt. Till was actually hanged at Aversa.[21]

U.S. Army Chaplain William O. Strother, an African-American Methodist minister, presided over the funerals of both soldiers at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Naples. Telegram were dispatched by the War Department to notify both soldiers' next of kin. Despite her later statements that the U.S. Army told her nothing, the War Department telegram sent to Mamie Till read, according to Col. French Maclean, that her husband's cause of death was, "Judicial Asphixiation (sic) due to his own willful misconduct in Italy."[22] In 1948, Private Till's remains were moved to the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E.[7]: 195 

According to Colonel French Maclean, "The Army returned Louis Till's silver ring, bearing the initials 'LT', to his estranged wife in Chicago. In 1955, she let her son Emmett take the ring to visit relatives in Mississippi, where he was soon murdered, resulting in a civil rights case that gained lasting national attention. Authorities identified Emmett's mutilated body, in part, through the distinctive ring."[23]

Aftermath
Confidential magazine headlines a story on Louis Till's execution in 1956

The reasons for Pvt. Louis Till's death were not revealed to his family; Mamie Till's attempts to learn more were comprehensively blocked by the United States Army bureaucracy.[18] The full details of Louis Till's criminal charges and execution emerged only ten years later. On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, after allegedly making advances towards Carolyn Bryant, a local white woman. (Years later, a historian claimed that Bryant disclosed to him that she had fabricated testimony that Till made verbal or physical advances towards her in the store.[24] However, the family of Bryant has disputed this claim.[25]) Her husband and brother-in-law abducted Till and tortured him to death, then threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. Both were arrested a few days later, charged with and tried for first-degree murder, but were acquitted by an all-white jury in September 1955.

In October 1955, after the murder trial and extremely controversial acquittal gained international media attention, U.S. Senators from Mississippi James Eastland and John C. Stennis uncovered details about Pvt. Louis Till's court-martial and execution and leaked them to media sources sympathetic to continued segregation. In November 1955, a Leflore County grand jury declined to return an indictment against Emmett Till's two killers for kidnapping, despite a recent magazine interview in which they both had freely admitted to being guilty of that very offense.[18]

In the pro-Segregationist media, various editorials claimed that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the "Yankee" media had lied about the record of Emmett Till's father.[17]: 136  Many of these editorials specifically cited an article in Life Magazine, which presented Louis Till as having been killed in action while fighting for his country in France. According to historians, Life magazine was an exception rather than the rule, and no other "northern" media had praised Pvt. Till or embellished his war record; additionally, Life later published a retraction.[17]: 136  However, the impression was left among some southerners that the erroneous Life article was representative of the Northern media in general.[17]: 136  Several other Southern editorials went so far as to smear Emmett Till by association with his father's crimes. They even alleged that Emmett Till had attempted to commit sexual assault, after the fashion of his father and thereby justified his murder as an act of vigilantism.[17]: 138 

Debate over trial and sentencing

In 2016, notable African-American novelist and essayist John Edgar Wideman explored the circumstances leading to and including the military conviction of Louis Till. In the partly fictional book Writing to Save a Life – The Louis Till File, Wideman examines the trial record and compares it to the trial of Emmett's killers, calling both "a farce", and expresses the belief that the leak of Mr. Till's military records during 1955 was an intentional effort to further demonize Emmett Till and retroactively justify the acquittal of his murderers. Wideman expresses the viewpoint that Louis Till may have been punished for the "Crime of being (Black)", rather than for committing any real crimes, citing the disproportionate punishment of African-American soldiers for rape as well as laws in the United States that defined all sexual encounters between African-American men and white women as rape.[26]

Wideman's analysis of Till's murder trial alleged one of its witness insisted that the killer was a white person before recanting their statement, and in Till's rape trial, both victims said that they were assaulted in darkness and could not identify their attackers, declining to label Till or his co-defendant as suspects. Wideman believed that their execution, due to these inconsistencies, was racially motivated.[26][27][28]

Ollie Gordon, one of Emmett Till's cousins, was recorded visiting Louis Till's grave in France for the final episode of the ABC documentary series Let the World See, which aired in January 2022. Referencing Wideman's analysis of Till's murder and rape trails, she said "He's laying in this less than honorable area for a crime that we're still not sure that he committed."[29]

United States Army Colonel French Maclean, who also tracked down and examined the case file and sentencing documents, has a very different opinion. In a book documenting the court martial proceedings and executions of every one of the World War II GIs who, like Pvt. Till, lie buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E, Col. MacLean wrote, "From the manner in which Private Louis Till spoke and the way he carried himself, you might think he was a small time gangster from Chicago. Fear was Till's game. He terrorized his wife, terrorized his fellow soldiers and terrorised local Italians who did not cooperate with him. Unfortunately for Private Till, one of his co-conspirators was not afraid of him and agreed to testify against the tough guy from the Windy City in return for a recommendation of clemency in his own case."[30]

See also

References
  1. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 216. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  2. Till-Mobley, Mamie; Benson, Christopher (2003). The Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6117-2.
  3. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 213. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  4. "American Experience . The Murder of Emmett Till . People & Events". Pbs.org. Archived from the original on 2003-01-19. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
  5. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 212. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  6. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 213. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  7. Anderson, Devery S. (2015). Emmett Till : the murder that shocked the world and propelled the civil rights movement. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-4968-0285-9.
  8. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Pages 212-213. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  9. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 213. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  10. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Pages 212-213. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  11. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Pages 212-213. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  12. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 213. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  13. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 213-214. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  14. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 214. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  15. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 214. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  16. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 214. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  17. Houck, Davis; Grindy, Matthew (2008). Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-934110-15-7.
  18. Whitfield, Stephen (1991). A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till. JHU Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-8018-4326-6.
  19. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 214-216. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  20. Pound, Ezra (1948). The Pisan Cantos. New York: New Directions. ISBN 978-0-8112-1558-9.
  21. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Pages 215-216. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  22. MacLean, French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 213-215. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  23. MacLean, French L., The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II:, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 216. ISBN 978-0764345777.
  24. Pérez-Peña, Richard (2017-01-27). "Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False". The New York Times.
  25. Mitchell, Jerry (August 21, 2018). "NEWS Bombshell quote missing from Emmett Till tape. So did Carolyn Bryant Donham really recant?". Mississippi Clarion Ledger.
  26. Buckley, Gail Lumet (14 December 2016). "The Eerie Tragedy of Emmett Till's Father, Told by John Edgar Wideman". The New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  27. Wideman, John Edgar (2016). Writing to Save a Life - The Louis Till File. New York, NY: Scribner. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-5011-4728-9.
  28. Wideman, John (October 19, 2016). "A Black and White Case". Esquire. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  29. Robinson, Adia (20 January 2022). "Emmett Till's cousin visits grave of Till's father in new series". ABC News. ABC News. ABC News. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  30. MacLean, Colonel French L. The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Page 212. ISBN 978-0764345777.
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