The September 1955 acquittal of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant for the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till fueled further racial violence. Clinton Melton was an outspoken black man who was gunned down here two and a half months later by Milam’s friend Elmer Kimball, allegedly over a dispute about filling up a gas tank. On the day before Kimball’s trial in Sumner, Melton’s widow, Beulah, was apparently forced off the road near Glendora and drowned in Black Bayou, leaving five children orphaned. Kimball was acquitted of Clinton Melton’s murder.