Louis Till

Case record: Louis Till

STATUS

Louis Till was executed by hanging by the U.S. Army on July 2, 1945.

Background

Louis Till died on July 2, 1945. He was an American soldier and the father of Emmett Louis Till. Louis Till grew up an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri.

Louis Till married Mamie Carthan in Argo, Illinois in 1940. Mamie Carthan gave birth to their son, Emmett Louis Till, on July 25, 1941. Louis Till and Mamie Carthan separated in 1942 after he attacked her violently. Mamie Carthan defended herself by throwing boiling water on him. Eventually Mamie obtained a restraining order against him. After violating it repeatedly, a judge forced him to choose between enlisting in the U.S. Army or facing jail time. He chose to enlist and joined the Army in 1943.

The offence

In 1945 Louis Till was court-martialed on charges of the murder of an Italian woman and the rape of two others in Civitavecchia.

Trial

After a lengthy investigation, Louis Till was convicted of the charges of murder and rape.

Sentencing

Louis Till was executed by hanging near Pisa on July 2, 1945.

Outcome

Louis Till was executed by hanging near Pisa by the U.S. Army on July 2, 1945.

Aftermath

Louis Till is buried in Plot E of Oise-Aisne American Cemetery.

A fellow prisoner of the poet Ezra Pound, who had been imprisoned for his fascist radio broadcasts in support of the Axis powers, Louis Till was mentioned in lines 171-173 of Canto 74 of Pound's Pisan Cantos:

Till was hung yesterday for murder and rape with trimmings

The circumstances of Till's death were little known even to his family until they were revealed after the trial of his son's murderers ten years later. Mamie Till later said that she was only told her husband's death was due to "willful misconduct", and noted that bureaucracy had frustrated her attempts to learn anything more.

Emmett Till was then fourteen when he was kidnapped and murdered on August 28, 1955 in Mississippi, after reportedly flirting with a white woman. The two men charged with the murder, the woman's husband and his brother, were both acquitted of the crime in September.

After the trial, which received much attention from the national media, Mississippi senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis uncovered details about Louis Till's crimes and execution and released them to reporters.

The Southern media immediately responded. Editorials claimed that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Northern media had covered up or lied about the truth of Emmett Till's father. Many of these editorials specifically attacked a short editorial that had appeared in Life magazine, which presented Louis Till as having died fighting for his country in France. The Life article was described as the only published piece that had ever lionized the elder Till, and Life quickly retracted the error. The erroneous impression was said to remain for white Southerners, leading them to view it as representative of Northern media in general.

Other editorials went so far as to associate Emmett Till's actions with his father's crimes. These editorials portrayed Emmett as a burgeoning rapist after the fashion of his father, thereby making his murder portrayed as justified.

Other details

Louis Till's conviction was followed by execution by hanging by the U.S. Army on July 2, 1945.