Michael Rosa, 37, of little Itta Bena, Mississippi, lost a research paper he wrote as a student. “I wish I had been a more serious student then. I wish I had realized what I had written and the importance,” he said.
Rosa remembers turning in her work and then forgetting it until this fall, 15 years later, when she was taking a BA class in political science.
Once again, you have been asked to write a research paper and it is due in two weeks.
Both assignments? Write about a significant black history incident in Mississippi.
If Rosa could figure out how to get her hands on the document she wrote in 1994 about Emmett Till, a document that included a personal interview with one of Till’s killers, Roy Bryant, the assignment would have a more personal meaning today, she said.
“Back then, we didn’t have computers, printers, or copiers. But I would like to be able to get the original paper back. That would certainly help with this task,” he said.
Rosa has a fascinating story to tell, even if she cannot retrieve the most important student article she has ever written, probably the most historically significant article she has ever written.
Rosa was studying African American history at Valley State University, the historically black small university near her hometown in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in 1994 when an African American history professor issued the first assignment that is close to the project she is currently trying to pursue. end up.
The first time, Rosa knew early on that she wanted to write about Till, a 14-year-old Chicago schoolboy who was murdered while visiting relatives in the Delta in 1955. The event is said to have sparked the modern civil rights movement and is a part of the story that has gained interest in recent years as the FBI investigated this unsolved civil rights case.
This fall, Till’s original coffin was moved to the Smithsonian Museum for protection and eventual display, after the Chicago cemetery where his body is buried was subjected to grave robberies. Till’s grave was unharmed, but his original coffin was found abandoned in an old shed.
Additionally, the race for historical research is underway in Mississippi as the state prepares to move into the future, with a new commitment to have its scholars learn the truth about their state’s civil rights past. The classroom program is the result of a law passed in 2006 by the Legislature and implementation is planned statewide for the 2010-2011 school year.
Rosa knew about Till because the murder was so shocking that it made international news in 1955, just one year after the United States Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education which declared an end to segregated schools. Till’s murder took place near Rosa’s hometown.
Till, while visiting relatives in the Delta, allegedly whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, who with her husband ran a small grocery store in Money, a nearby cotton village even smaller than Itta Bena.
Rosa was working on her first homework assignment in 1994 when her cousin, Pete Walker, asked her about her work. It turned out that Rosa’s grandfather, “probably a member of the Klan,” had brought Till’s killers out of the nearby Greenwood jail.
“My grandfather, Landy Walker, lived in the same small town of Phillips near Money. It was a small community and everyone helped each other, so that’s probably why my grandfather did this,” Rosa said.
The cousin told Rosa that she could help him with his investigative work by giving her the opportunity to meet Roy Bryant first-hand, who with JW Milam killed the young visitor. They were never convicted, but later confessed their guilt to a reporter for a national magazine.
The two traveled to Ruleville, about 30 miles northwest of Itta Bena, where Rosa remembers meeting Bryant at his watermelon stand on the corner of the highway heading west to Cleveland.
“He was cordial when I told him about my article. Then he started talking in great detail. He was giving his personal opinion on what happened that night; he didn’t really mention JW Milam (Till’s second killer) or anyone else, but Me I realized that he hadn’t changed one bit since that night.
“He used the N word over and over, maybe 100 times, when he told me what happened. He said at first, after his wife told him what Till had done, that he was just going to yell at the boy. But he said Emmett made some comments that pushed him overboard. So they killed him. “
Bryant told Rosa that he was very drunk that night and said they killed Till and tied a gin fan around his neck while they were still at Drew. “It looked like Till was dead or unconscious when they did that to him.”
Talking to Bryant was “… like talking to a stone-cold killer. He showed absolutely no remorse. It was like he could vividly remember what happened that night.”
Rosa remembers Bryant saying that his wife, Carolyn, was with the men. “He said he came home to the store and she said Until [using a derogatory term] he had ‘come to her’. Bryant said he went with him and Milam to the uncle’s house. [Rev. Moses Wright] kidnapping Till and that she identified him, that she pointed him out. “
Rosa remembers Bryant explaining that Emmett Till was killed “because he didn’t understand where the hell he was, that he was in the south” and “because he wasn’t scared at all, like he should have been.”
Bryant was a bitter man who was angry at the white community for refusing to do business at his watermelon stand, Rosa said. “Bryant claimed Milam ‘got all the money’ from the magazine interview. He died two weeks after we spoke.”
A racist grandfather can easily poison his family’s beliefs for generations to come. But the circle was broken for Rosa, she says, because her grandmother made a difference. Rosa’s mother worked long hours and her maternal grandmother, “a kind soul,” took care of him.
The family was poor and lived on the outskirts of the black side of the city where Rosa “saw racism while I was growing up every day.”
Other white children went to the city’s private white academy. But Rosa lived 100 feet from the public school and decided to go there, from elementary to high school.
“Some of the white families got together and offered to pay my white school tuition. They didn’t want me to go to public school with black kids. I was the only white student.”
A neighbor once offered him to pay for his studies until college, if he changed to the private academy. “I said ‘no’ to her and she said, ‘… well, at least don’t associate with any of them.’
Rosa knew, as a child, that he did not want to “be like that.”
Recently, as a mentor in public school, the administrator asked Rosa if she had any ideas on how to reach white children and get them to come to public school.
“It’s tough. When I was little, one side of the city was completely white. Now there are only three white families left. Everyone else has moved to the country and they either homeschool or send their children to Pillow Academy in Greenwood. . “
Meanwhile, Rosa said she plans to sit quietly and try to remember as much as she can about the interview she had with Roy Bryant all those years ago.
“I really remember most of what he said, very vividly. It’s an important story and I want to be able to pass it on to others.”
