But it’s also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it’s important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some.
The 60 Minutes story on the killing of Emmett Till will air on Sunday. Because of our our conversation with the FBI agent investigating the case last week, we had found out that the program would soon appear. As the agent indicated, it will stress the possible involvement of Carolyn Bryant. She was the wife of Roy Bryant, one of the alleged killers. Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were tried for the murder and acquitted in 1955.
The 60 Minutes report will also include an interview with Henry Lee Loggins, a black former employee of J.W. Milam. Apparently, it will not, however, press for his prosecution.
Readers of Liberty and Power know that my wife and co-author, Linda Royster Beito of Stillman College, were probably the first people to interview Loggins about the case (in July 2001). We had sought him out because of our biography of T.R.M. Howard (pictured here, third person from the left) . Howard was a key civil rights figure, businessman, and fraternal leader in Mississippi who believed that others took part in the killing other than the two white defendants. Loggins strongly denied any involvement of first-hand knowledge of the killing.
After our interview of Loggins, we gave his phone number to film maker, Keith Beauchamp (mentioned below) who then interviewed him for his documentary. At the time of the murder, some alleged that Loggins had participated.
We were also probably the first people to interview Willie Reed. Reed was a black prosecution witness who testified that shortly after the kidnapping he saw Till in a pickup truck with J.W. Milam and several other possible black and white suspects. We wrote an analysis of the case for the History News Network several months ago which includes a discussion of these issues.
Here are excerpts from the 60 Minutes news release:
THE WHITE WOMAN EMMETT TILL WHISTLED AT AND A MAN ALLEGED TO HAVE HELPED THOSE WHO KILLED HIM FOR IT ARE A FOCUS OF A REOPENED MURDER CASE"60 MINUTES" SUNDAY
One of the reasons Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in 1955 was because a black teenager was tortured and murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman a few months before. No one ever paid for the crime, but 60 MINUTES has confirmed that the recently reopened investigation into the torture-murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till is focused on at least two people: the woman he whistled at and a man who witnesses say they saw on a truck with Till after his abduction. Ed Bradley's report on the case that helped galvanize the civil rights movement in America will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Oct. 24 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
The woman Till whistled at, Carolyn Bryant, disappeared from view and was never arrested or charged in the crime. 60 MINUTES found her, now aged 70, living in Greenville, Miss., divorced and remarried and now known as Carolyn Donham. 60 MINUTES confirmed that Donham is a focus of the investigation. Neither she nor her son, Frank Bryant, would discuss Till or the reopened investigation and her involvement in it.
Till, from Chicago, was visiting his cousin, Simeon Wright, when the incident occurred. Wright saw Byrant's husband, Roy, and Bryant's brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, take Till away from the Wright residence late at night. He tells Bradley that his father told him there was a woman in the truck who identified Till."At the time, we believed it was Bryant's wife [Carolyn]. And after 48 and some odd years, there's nothing arisen to dispel that belief," says Wright.
Bryant and Milam were tried for the crime, but acquitted by an all-white jury after a one-hour deliberation, despite the testimony of Wright's father and others.
Blacks were also involved in the crime, according to witnesses. Wright says his father saw a black man on his porch that night with Bryant and Milam and other witnesses said they saw a black man on the truck with Till. The witnesses claimed they saw Henry Lee Loggins, a black man who worked for Milam at the time and who 60 MINUTES also confirmed is under investigation. 60 MINUTES found him living in Ohio. Now 81, Loggins denies the stories."I can't figure it out," he tells Bradley."I wouldn't sit here and tell you no lie. I don't know nothing about that case."
The decision to reopen the case is due in large part to the efforts of Keith Beauchamp, a young, black amateur filmmaker from Louisiana who has devoted much of his life to telling the story of Till and who is producing a documentary on the case. He theorizes, in an interview with Bradley, that even if Loggins and other blacks were involved, it was under duress."We believe that they were forced to participate in the crime. It was going to be either them or Emmett Till," he tells Bradley.
In the Tragedy of American Compassion, for example, Marvin Olasky faults Frances Fox Piven, Michael Harrington and other leftists for waging a"War Against Shame" during the 1960s that created more welfare dependents.
Now, Henry Paulson has done Piven one better. He has urged bankers to take government money as a patriotic duty:
Some of the nation's largest banks had to be pressured to participate in the $250 billion plan to inject their institutions with cash, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said today. Paulson said he wanted healthy institutions that did not necessarily need capital from the government to go first as a way of removing any stigma that might be associated with banks getting bailouts.
In a welcome shift away from its Iraq-centric focus, the steering committee of Historians Against the War has stated that "the US and NATO should immediately begin withdrawing their military and political assets from Afghanistan so that the Afghan people can have room to decide their own future. Continued US/NATO action in the country is a large part of the problem and cannot be the solution."
Because both Obama and McCain endorse a surge of U.S. troops into that country, HAW is now on a collision course with the next president. Does this also mean that conditions created by an Obama administration will bring a new spirit of cooperation between antiwar libertarians, leftists, and conservatives?
As many of you know, I write occasionally for the HAW Blog.
The contrast between rightwing talk radio and MSM outlets on the bailout issue is striking. Yesterday, I made the the mistake of listening to"All Things Considered" (formerly sponsored by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and heard a litany of pro-bailout voices. For all its vices, talk radio has provided a needed counterweight to the MSM's attempt to manufacture a consensus on this issue.
Like McCain, Obama endorsed the General Jack Ripperesque move of admitting Ukraine and Georgia to NATO (thus potentially obligating the U.S. to escalate to World War III in case of a border dispute with Russia) and a"surge" of more U.S. troops into Afghanistan. Obama's statements on U.S. military incursions into Pakistan made McCain look almost cool-headed by comparison (no small accomplishment).
In this short clip from the notorious, pro-Stalin film from 1943, "Mission to Moscow," Walter Huston, playing the American ambassador, Joseph E. Davies, smears pre-war non-interventionists, defends the Soviet invasion of Finland, and depicts the Soviets as peace-loving.
Apparently, Davies was not a typical fellow traveler. According to Soviet archives, he purchased art at discount prices that had been confiscated from purge victims.
Barney Frank, 2003. See here.
For the youtube, see here
