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"Trial by jury," he said slowly, "is one of the sacred guarantees of the Constitution." Bryant and Milam lit big cigars while the whites of Tallahatchie County cheered. But the two men were not released. They face kidnaping charges in Leflore County and were jailed there, awaiting bail.
In Tallahatchie County, while the whites rejoiced, the Negroes went about the cotton harvest, sullen-eyed. Willie Reed's family sent him to Chicago. Old Mose Wright and his family plan to move to Albany, N.Y. Tallahatchie County remains 63% Negro—with not one Negro on its rolls of registered voters or on its jury rolls.
Tallahatchie is not the South, either the Old South or the new, burgeoning industrial South. It is an island, and there are many in the Deeper South, where the law of the land and the will of the community—as expressed in trial by jury or otherwise—are in basic conflict. The feeling created in the U.S. by the Till case indicated that something was going to have to give.