'A child Shouldn't Have To Be Scared'

Belzoni, Miss. courthouse where Rev. George Lee, a popular voting rights advocate, was killed May 7, 1954, less than four months before Emmett Till was murdered in nearby Sunflower County. Photograph by Susan Klopfer.

Post 12 of a free blog book, Who Killed Emmett Till

JUST SEVERAL MONTHS after the violent May 7, 1954 murder of Rev. George Lee, a popular Delta minister and voting rights advocate, a Boy Scout campfire was burning down to its last embers over in Tallahatchie County, on the outskirts of Charleston.

Robert Keglar and his teenage campers were seated around the fire this hot August night as they heard a story they would never forget.

A “very shaken” man, finding his way into their Tallahatchie campsite in the early morning hours, told them of hearing the screams of a teenage boy being tortured and beaten to death several hours earlier. It happened in a machine shed on the Sheridan plantation outside of Drew, in adjacent Sunflower County about 40 miles southwest of where they were camping.

There were horrible screams and when “several” men finished killing the young boy, they took his body from the barn and hauled it off, the visitor said. More than two men were in the lynching party he told Keglar and others as the fire smoldered into its final ashes.

Tired and bewildered campers finally bedded down and when they awoke for breakfast, the visitor was gone.

Two half-brothers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, after disposing of Emmett Till’s body, would be seen later that morning in a Glendora, home washing off the blood, Keglar later heard.
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