Digging for the Truth: Jim Emison, BA’65, devotes retirement to civil rights–era cold case

In 1939, Elbert Williams helped found the Brownsville, Tennessee, chapter of the NAACP, which sought to regain voting rights for Haywood County African Americans. The next year, police and one civilian forcibly removed Williams from his home. Williams' body was pulled out of the Hatchie River three days later with two bullet holes in his chest. He was buried without an autopsy the same day in an unmarked grave.

Jim Emison is dedicated to seeking justice for Williams, the first known NAACP member to be racially terrorized and slain. Emison credits his Vanderbilt undergraduate education for sparking his passion for lifelong learning and preserving civil rights history.

"Several of my professors, including Walter Sullivan, inspired me to keep digging for the truth," Emison says. "I majored in history, and my only regret was not being a more serious student."

Emison did, however, become an accomplished, award-winning courtroom attorney and served as president of the Tennessee Bar Association and the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association. He has focused much of his retirement on solving Williams' death after coming across the cold case during other research. Emison had tried cases for many years in Brownsville, the seat of Haywood County, about 60 miles northeast of Memphis. "As a lifelong resident of nearby Alamo, I was puzzled that I had never heard about Williams' murder," Emison says.

"Pursuing justice for Williams' murder has taught me so much. I'm grateful to Vanderbilt because what perhaps is even better than good grades is a yearning to keep learning. My professors certainly instilled that in me."

The U.S. Department of Justice first ordered a prosecution in the Williams case, then mysteriously reversed course and closed it. "I believe this is the first time a U.S. attorney and the FBI conspired to destroy a federal investigation and prosecution of a civil rights case," Emison says. Criticism from Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP activists was so intense that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered an internal investigation, which he later deep-sixed.

After Emison began investigating, the missing coroner's report on Williams' death was found in 2012, identifying where Williams' body was pulled from the river. The report was found unlabeled, behind old minute books in the clerk's archive. Since then, milestones in the case have included:

2015-Memorial service commemorating the 75th anniversary of Williams' tragic death draws a biracial crowd of 600. A Tennessee historical marker is unveiled, noting that Williams' slaying was part of a white terrorist campaign to keep African Americans from voting.

2018-Haywood District Attorney Garry Brown reopens the investigation into Williams' death. Emison and others try, so far unsuccessfully, to identify the exact location of Williams' grave.

2018-Elbert Williams' death is added to the DOJ's Emmett Till list of racially motivated murders.

2024-National Park Service sends a team to West Tennessee to evaluate several lynching sites, including Brownsville, with the possibility for a monument and eventual museum to recognize Williams and other civil rights martyrs.

Emison has completed a manuscript on the case, Murder on the Hatchie. Its foreword is by Margaret Burnham, an internationally recognized expert on civil and human rights. Documentary filmmakers have expressed interest in the story.

"Pursuing justice for Williams' murder has taught me so much," Emison says. "I'm grateful to Vanderbilt because what perhaps is even better than good grades is a yearning to keep learning. My professors certainly instilled that in me."

-Ann Marie Deer Owens, BA'76