Florida State Acquires Newly Discovered Papers for Emmett Till Archives

The Emmett Till Archives, featuring primary and secondary source material related to the life, murder, and memory of Emmett Louis Till, is p...

The Emmett Till Archives, featuring primary and secondary source material related to the life, murder, and memory of Emmett Louis Till, is part of special collections at the Florida State University Libraries. Shown are Emmett and Mamie Till, 1908.FSU Special Collections & ArchivesFlorida 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 Till’s killers, J. W. Milam and his half-brother, Roy Bryant. The papers were gifted to Florida State by Whitten’s granddaughter, Ellen Whitten.

“Huie’s 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,” 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 Till’s story.

Dr. Davis HouckTill, 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 uncle’s home, tortured, killed, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River.

“Huie’s ‘Look’ magazine article ran in January 1956 and continues to influence perceptions of Till and also the claim that only two men were involved in Till’s kidnap, torture, and murder. In reality, at least eight men were involved, a fact carefully covered up by Huie’s lies,” said Houck. “Those lies are documented in this new collection.”

In June, Whitten delivered those papers to Houck, who said the university’s 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 Till’s 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.

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