Report’s edge, a footnote, indexed by the asterisk above, contains two phrases, “judicial asphyxiation” and “sol died in a non-battle status due to his own misconduct.” Mrs. Till asserted on numerous occasions that only the second phrase was included in the telegram of July 13, 1945, sent to inform her of her husband’s death.
Given many such willful or unavoidable or contested or careless or premeditated aporias in the official account, how could the most diligent researcher hope to accurately reconstruct a double hanging in Aversa, Italy, over a half century after it happened.
Where there’s life, there’s hope, my mom used to say, even though my father, if he happened to be around, would always interject: And for every tree, there’s a rope, a rejoinder that would have irritated Mom even more if she had known (and probably she did) it was the punch line of a joke making fun of a southern darky ha-ha-ha obsessed with copping him a taste of white pussy ha-ha before he dies.
Where there’s life, there’s hope
Did Louis Till ever cop a taste of leghorn. Some historians contend the city of Leghorn is named for chickens its earliest settlers found in residence when they arrived to erect a fortified town in the middle ages. Others argue leghorn chickens—a small, hardy domestic fowl noted for prolific egg production—are named for the city where they were originally bred. Though the city of Leghorn, near Genoa in northwestern Italy on the Ligurian Sea, played a prominent role in his short (twenty-three years) life, it’s probably safe to conjecture Louis Till could not have cared less whether chickens or city bore the name leghorn first. But did he ever sample the local bird. Louis Till probably knew chicken in the sense Charlie Parker (a.k.a. Bird for love of them) knew chicken, but whatever Louis Till thought about leghorns or the city of Leghorn is lost in the silence that confronted me when I sought his voice in documents from the file.
Malcolm (a.k.a. Malcolm X) who shares a family name Little with the famously paranoid bird Chicken Little, was not literally present at Louis Till’s trial and execution, but Malcolm informed the world in no uncertain terms why proverbial chickens on their way home to roost in America would have paused in Leghorn/ Livorno and clucked disapproval of the kangaroo court-martial conviction and hanging of colored privates Louis Till and Fred A. McMurray. Louis Till, my father and most other veterans of World War II, colored and not, are gone now and humankind is no closer to solving problems created by the conundrum of race than we are to figuring out whether leghorn chickens or their eggs came first. I attempt to smile and nod reassuringly as I promise Louis Till, Mamie Till, my father, brothers, sister, mother, Emmett Till, Malcolm, Martin, Mandela et cetera, that some of us are absolutely not satisfied by the prospect of remaining forever in the dark. Darkness as deep and sinister as the dark in which many colored soldiers, executed like Till and McMurray and James Hendricks, lie buried.
All stories are true. As far as I’ve been able to glean, Louis Till possessed no knowledge of that particular Igbo proverb, nor a general familiarity with the customs and folklore of the Igbo, a West African ethnic group whose homeland is southeastern Nigeria (a.k.a. Biafra). Even if Till had been a prolific reader, he would not have come across all stories are true in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, where I first read the proverb. Achebe’s novel, set in a traditional Igbo village at the beginning of the twentieth century, was not published until 1958, thirteen years after Louis Till’s death. Yet it seems that Till was privy to the wisdom of all stories are true. In the only direct quote attributed to him by army officers in the entire Till file, Louis Till articulates a very Igbo understanding of the predicament in which he found himself.
According to report #41 (Criminal Investigation Division/ Rome Allied Army Command, United States Army—7 August, 1944) filed by CID/RAAC agents I. H. Rousseau and J. J. Herlihy and included in the Till documents I received, Louis Till didn’t open up to any extent when Herlihy, posing as a fellow prisoner, confined himself (10 July 1944) in the brig with Till to gain information about the crimes—assault, rape, murder—of June 27–28 in Civitavecchia, Italy. Another attempt to secure a statement from Till on 23 July 1944, the report continues, also met with negative results. Till remained adamantly silent, offering no information about the crimes being investigated nor providing an alibi to establish his whereabouts on the night of June 27. A stubborn silence that must have puzzled and frustrated his army interrogators since all the other accused colored soldiers were busy accusing one another. Breaking his silence once in response to the agents’ repeated demands for a statement, Louis Till allegedly said to Rousseau, “There’s no use in me telling you one lie and then getting up in court and telling another one,” a remark that clearly conveys to me and should have conveyed to Rousseau, Till’s Igbo sophistication, his resignation, his Old World, ironic sense of humor about truth’s status in a universe where all truths are equal until power chooses one truth to serve its needs.
If not in Achebe’s book, where did Louis Till learn the proverb’s wisdom. Louis Till was probably not good at reading. Not a devourer of paperback westerns like my father. Different as they were, both men were the same deep brown color, I believe, and both boxed. Both men, like traditional Igbo wrestlers, honed their bodies to school their minds. Both were good enough with their fists to try amateur boxing. My father in Pittsburgh, Till in Chicago, according to Mamie Till’s autobiography.
I see Louis Till in a gym—bobbing, weaving, feinting, throwing punches. Hear him training as I turn pages of the Till file. Heavy bag—whomp, whomp. Speed bag—blippidity—blip—blippidity—blip—blip. Sugar Ray fast hands flick out quick, quicker. Till up on his toes, leans in, dips back, circling—blip—blip—blip—blippidity—the bag can’t get away quick enough. Till tags it. Stings it. Snaps his punches. Sweat flicks off his dark shoulders. Then hop-hop-hop-hop he’s skipping rope—arc of jump rope cuts slices of air, tongue-shaped, round-shouldered tombstone slices inscribed a thousand perfect times. They hiss over him, behind him, portals of frozen air which frame a snapshot of Louis Till each time the rope whips by. Only inches to spare. Top of Till’s head sliced clean off if he doesn’t duck, step, lean, hip-hop through the whizzing rope.
Been there, done a little boxing myself. Recall how a jump rope dies a split-second whap as each arc strikes the floor. Whap-whap-whap under Till’s feet. In canvas shoes, quick hop after little quick hop seems like the boy don’t hardly touch the ground—he’s flying—the spinning rope whaps the gym’s wood floor—whap—whap—like slaps in the face. Wooden handles of jump rope gripped in taped fists, Louis Till carves the shape—tombstone, tongue—one last time. Ducks under, ducks through. He’s winded. Sweat drips. He freezes. Still as stone a couple counts, then attacks the speed bag again, relentless until he’s finished and lets the bag wobble to a stop. Walks away wet head to toes. Skinny calves, thick thighs, thick torso, a pigeon-toed walk like they say the fastest runners walk. Till heavyset, but light on his feet, sneaky quick, a silent Indian kind of walk and isn’t that why she’s so quiet, Mamie Till so still, holding her breath, waiting for Louis to return.
Mamie Till is difficult to pick out in the apartment’s deepest shadowed corner where she’s slumped. She doesn’t want Louis Till to see her before she sees him. Quiet as a mouse so he won’t hear her before she hears him and launches her attack or counterattack, she tells herself, hiding from her husband in the darkness with a butcher knife and pot of boiled water with a lid to stay hot, scald his sorry ass, his mean soul. He hurt her first. Louis Till hurt her bad and she’s still hurting an hour later, back pushed against the wall, knees pulled up, chin resting on her swollen breasts, breasts resting on her big belly, the poor little child inside her made to go through all this ugly shit, too. Not even born yet but here’s her baby, his baby in the dark crying and hurting like she is, her poor baby inside her moaning like she’d moan out loud if the noise wouldn’t give away her hiding place. Mamie Till is all drawn up inside herself, quiet-quiet, hard-soft ball of herself, round and crowded up with the scared baby inside, she waits. Mamie righteous, fierce, because to save her child she must save herself. She must counterattack and
