In January, 1954, about eighteen months prior to young Emmett Tills murder, and only forty miles away, a young black man named Eddie Noel shot and killed a white honky-tonk operator named Willie Ramon Dickard. Dickards killing by Noel led to formation of perhaps the largest posse in Mississippi history, its members fueled by hatred, outrage, and in some cases, white lightning. Noel took on elements of the posse in two gunfights, killing two more white men and wounding three others.