MISSISSIPPI: Justice in Water Valley

When Sheriff J. G. (for James Gray) Treloar was accused of beating up and fatally injuring a Negro prisoner in his jail, few in north Mississippi's red clay Yalobusha County expected much to come of it. But when a grand jury indicted Treloar for manslaughter, white citizens in the county seat of Water Valley moved fast. Remembering the "bad publicity" of the Emmett Till case three years before in neighboring Tallahatchie County (TIME, Oct. 3, 1955), they dissuaded Water Valley Negroes from hiring an N.A.A.C.P. lawyer, instead chipped in for a white attorney to act as the district attorney's special...

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