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    The Blood of Emmett Till
    The Blood of Emmett Till
    The Blood of Emmett Till
    Ebook402 pages6 hours

    The Blood of Emmett Till

    By Timothy B. Tyson

    4/5

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    This extraordinary New York Times bestseller reexamines a pivotal event of the civil rights movement—the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till—“and demands that we do the one vital thing we aren’t often enough asked to do with history: learn from it” (The Atlantic).

    * A New York Times Notable Book * A Washington Post Notable Book * Longlisted for the National Book Award * Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award *An NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Book of the Year *

    In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. Only weeks later, Rosa Parks thought about young Emmett as she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Five years later, Black students who called themselves “the Emmett Till generation” launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle for civil rights into a mass movement. Till’s lynching became the most notorious hate crime in American history.

    But what actually happened to Emmett Till—not the icon of injustice, but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till “unfolds like a movie” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), drawing on a wealth of new evidence, including a shocking admission of Till’s innocence from the woman in whose name he was killed. “Jolting and powerful” (The Washington Post), the book “provides fresh insight into the way race has informed and deformed our democratic institutions” (Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me Home) and “calls us to the cause of justice today” (Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJan 31, 2017
    ISBN9781476714868
    The Blood of Emmett Till
    Author

    Timothy B. Tyson

    Timothy B. Tyson is senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, adjunct professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, and author of The Blood of Emmett Till.

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    Reviews for The Blood of Emmett Till

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      This is what happens when you do a lot of research about what was sold in the country stores but you still don't manage to add anything new to the conversation about a famous lynching. Read it if you don't know anything of the history of Emmett Till. The story is a tragedy and the fact that the instigator got to be an old lady, still lying, is infuriating to say the least. However, I found this book to be a boring rehash.
    • 3/5
      This one was just so-so for me. It isn't a terrible read, but I found the prose a bit stilted. I also found the author covered some background information that distracted from Mr. Till's story. I didn't feel a huge emotional connection, which I think the author had plenty to work with to give it more of a punch, and to relate it to modern times. I finished wanted more for my investment.

      All in all, not bad, but not spectacular either.
    • 5/5
      "White America's heritage of imaging blacks as fierce criminals, intent on political and sexual domination, as threatening bodies to be monitored and controlled, has never disappeared." "In many inner cities the drug trade is the only enterprise that is hiring, while the national unemployment rate for young black men is well over twice that for other young men." "We are still killing black youth because we have not yet killed white supremacy." Wow. Just wow. This is an excellent historical telling of the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy killed in 1955 by white men in Mississippi. Emmett was visiting Mississippi for the summer; his home was in Chicago. Tyson does an excellent job of sorting through what is known, what is suspected, and what can be concluded from this brutal and senseless murder of a young Black boy at the hands of white supremacist men, angry at his apparent disrespectful comments to one of their wives. Even if Till did the worst of that which he was accused of doing: grabbing the hand of a white woman at a store counter, asking her for a date, wolf-whistling at her later as she went to her car for a pistol.... none of that even remotely deserves the kind of brutal beating and slaying to which he was subjected. His body was found a few days later, bloated and damaged, floating in the Tallahatchie River with a gin fan tied to his neck with a stretch of barbed wire. The murder is tagged as a significant catalyst for the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. Most of the book is an exploration of history. What happened in Leflore County of Mississippi on August 28, 1955? Tyson shifts deftly between historical record and rational deduction. It's his epilogue, though, that lands a direct hit. He persuasively describes the white supremacy that yet permeates our society, perhaps not the virulent and visceral white supremacy of the men who murdered young Emmett Till, but the polite and practiced white supremacy of progressives (like me), well-intentioned members of society who remain immobile in the face of today's persistent and pernicious societal segregation, today's Jim Crow. Tyson is not throwing stones, but his analysis is compelling and level-headed. This is a surprisingly quick read and highly recommended. It's a great history lesson and a thought-provoking work.
    • 4/5
      In 1955, a Chicago black teenager went to Mississippi to spend the summer with an uncle. While buying some gum from a young married woman in a corner store, he either said something to her, touched her hand when handing her the money or failed to show deference to her as was expect for a black man to show a white woman in the South of that time. A few days later her husband and friend showed up at the boy's uncle's home and took the boy away. He was pulled dead and mutilated from the Tallahatchie River a couple of days later.At the murder trail everyone knew who had killed the boy but the jury found them innocent. The mother of Emmett Till, the murdered boy, decided she was going to get justice for her son and she started to agitate through the press and civil rights organizations which eventually led to the Civil Rights movement success of the late 1950's and 1960's. Rosa Parks claims that the Emmett Till story inspired her to refuse to give up her seat on the Montgomery City bus.The author, Tyson, demonstrates how the global outrage over this case led to the overthrow of Jim Crow although as he points out in the last chapter, racism and white supremacy are still huge problems in the Unites States.
    • 4/5
      5462. The Blood of Emmett Till, by Timothy B. Tyson (read 17 Apr 2017) This is a 2017 book which relates the events surrounding the murder of Emmett Till on 25 Aug 1955. The author obtained the transcript of the trial and interviewed the woman whose relatives tortured and killed Emmet Till . The account is pretty objective and damning of the evil acts and bigoted attitude of most whites in the area at the time and does a good job showing how much harm the killing did to the pro-segregation forces who the stupid killers thought they were helping by killing the 14-year-old Chicago boy visiting his Mississippi relatives. The last few chapters turn hortatory which I thought would have been better to be more reportorial, but the book is a commendable account.
    • 4/5
      Emmett Till was only 14 years old when he was yanked out of his uncle's house and brutally murdered for supposedly whistling at a white woman in a store. The murder of African Americans by whites was not uncommon at the time. However his mothers decision to have an open casket and allow the battered body of her son to be photographed changed everything. It put the world on notice about what life was like for African Americans in the south. Emmett Till's death became a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement and inspired people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. to fight for justice. This book is an unflinching look at the crime that changed America. Although I already knew the basics of the case I enjoyed the deeper look at the main players in the saga. It is important to remind people of Emmett Till, especially in this climate of heightened racial tensions. Today's generations need to learn about Emmett till because it is too easy to forget what the climate in America was for African Americans in the not so distant past. The recent events in Charlottesville completely boggle my mind. It seems like the events there took place in Emmett Till's time not in in 2017. Too many good people have died to prevent this kind of thing from happening today. The fact that white supremacists feel that it is okay to march in public makes this book even more important.
    • 3/5
      I was educated by this book right up until the author compared Emmitt Till to Michael Brown. Emmitt Till was an innocent child. There was no badness in him, only sweet nieveity of a racist world. Michael Brown was not innocent. The day of his death he had committed a few atrocities which indicated his potential for violence. In my opinion, Emmitt Till was completely without fault if anything and his murder was tragic to say the least. Michael Brown was intentionally playing with fire and got burned.
    • 4/5
      I was familiar with only the bare outline of the murder of Emmett Till before reading this book, but I leapt to read it when I saw it was by Tim Tyson, author of the astounding "Blood Done Sign My Name," about a widely witnessed murder of a black man by a white man in 1970s North Carolina. This newest book is not as strong as that one. The strong writing and novelistic recreation of the way Tyson tells history are here; the complications of too easy narratives that this true historian won't ignore are here; but despite the inclusion of the widely publicized interview Tyson had with Carolyn Bryant ("victim" of Till's possible whistle, silent in public from the 1954 trial to this publication), there is not much new here in terms of the facts of Till's lynching. And when the narrative ends, the implication piece gets a bit flowery in its prose, even when the content remains quite strong. (That alone is why four stars instead of five.)
    • 5/5
      The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson is an audible book I got from the library and I am not sure I am glad or not. I knew the story but not the details. I wanted to know but didn't want to know. It was so horrific, I didn't know if I could stand to hear it, to know that people stood by and let murderers go free. Did I want to live it? I did want to know because the world is turning backwards in any progress that has been made. Those of us that want the world to live in peace have to spread the word that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr preached, not the trash that is vomited from the WH tweets. I listened to the book and cried. The book may have pictures but since I had the audible version I googled Emmett's pictures. What a handsome young man! What a shame. The book is filled with details as to why he was there and not in Chicago. The "witnesses", later to claim it never happened. All the details of the times, the town, the people involved. How they got away with murder and three weeks later confessed but couldn't be convicted then. (Sold their story to Look magazine.) All because he whistled at a woman. I wonder what they would think if they knew we would have a rich, nasty man that brags about how many times he grabs women by their...and people voted this same scumbag to be the leader of the country...what is wrong with this country?
    • 5/5
      What an intense book about a tragedy in this Country. This is a part of our history that needs to be remembered, taught to the young people. Most I have asked if they knew who Emmett Till was did not know who he was. This saddens me. This book should be required reading in high school and college. We must never forget this innocent young man.. And this book is one way to learn and remember. The author did some fantastic research for this book. It was not just rehashed news. It was new and bold. I loved it. I recommend it to everyone!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I received this book from a Goodreads giveaway in return for an honest review. While I found the book to be interesting, I also, found myself getting bogged down in some of the background information. Once I was by that, and more into the actual events, it not only became interesting, but thought provoking and at times enraging. There were times that the language, while used in quotes, still seemed offensive. However, it was the language at the time when this crime was committed but can still make a reader uncomfortable. It makes the reader wonder if we really have come as far as we think in race relations. While some things may seem to have improved (desegregated schools, interracial marriage, more job opportunities); others, such as race relations, seem stuck in the past and are repeating themselves. One thing I would have liked to have seen in this book, was an additional page or two, telling what happened to the main participants in this book; such as are they still alive, what they did afterwards for a living, and if deceased, when they died.I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know what the South (since this is where it takes place) was like in the 1940's to 1960's for the African American population. And then ask themselves this question... have race relations really changed all that much ??

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Being familiar with the specifics of the Emmett Till lynching and trial doesn't make this any easier of a read. The brutality, willful ignorance, and complicity still brings me to my knees. And here, you really delve into the details. The number of times I was either shouting or crying throughout the book cannot be understated. Tyson presents the case masterfully and does a brilliant job couching it in the civil rights efforts of the 1950s and connecting it to how the movement developed in the '60s as well as the Black Lives Matter movement today. I would urge anyone who is struggling to understand why protests continue to read this book...the culture and series of events that led to Emmett Till's murder and its aftermath are every bit as relevant to the fight that continues (as Tyson states, "America is still killing Emmett Till"). I'm now inspired to reread King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." And trying to understand more, more, more.

      (Side note: I can't really recommend the audio. Side side note: UGH, why are male readers so frequently awful?? Especially when it comes to phrasing women's voices?? UGGGGHHHHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH. I get that many of them are actors so maybe they feel the need to do voices, but I don't need voices if you're gonna be like that. That's why authors write, "he said, she said." If the only way you characterize a woman's voice is to raise the pitch and make her sound like a shrinking violet, then you aren't a very good actor...or observer. I wish all audiobook samples used the reader reading from a section of dialog, so I could decide whether to continue from the get-go. /end rant)
    • 4/5
      Heartbreaking, but brilliant, it walks through the events and context surrounding the murder of Emmett Till and the influence it had on history. The ties linking it to today were a bit forced, at least as it came across in the audio, but, still, it's an important book.
    • 5/5
      The murder of Emmett Till is well-known to many who are aware of the state of affairs in the country during the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's. The brutal torture and murder of a fourteen-year old sparked a national and international reaction that fueled the rise of opposition to the systemic discrimination and oppression of African-Americans for so many decades, centuries really.The story is well-known. Till was visiting his cousins from Chicago in the heart of the Mississippi delta. He allegedly insulted and physically assaulted Carolyn Bryant who was behind the counter at her husband's store. For this he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Bryant's brother-in-law and husband. His body was recovered from the Tallachatchie River several days later. His mother in her grief and anger made the brave decision to display his gruesome body in an open casket. A photo was published across the nation and world and brought about an enormous reaction to this horrendous act.Tyson's research shed new light on this story. He tracked down Carolyn Bryant, now almost eighty and living in Raleigh, North Carolina. Bryant revealed that her testimony that Till had physically assaulted her was false.The pervasive discrimination in the South during this era was widely known. Even in the 1950's lynchings still occurred. The oppression of African-Americans was completely interwoven in Southern society at all levels of class in all components of social and civic institutions. African-Americans dared to attempt to vote only at peril for their lives. They could not serve on juries or give testimony in court against white people. There was a burgeoning civil rights movement whose leaders carried out their agenda at literal risk to their lives; a number were indeed assassinated. This book is much more than a true crime story; it gives a vivid picture of the relations between the white supremacist hierarchy and African-Americans in the South. Tyson does not let the North off the hook; he describes the pervasive, if somewhat more subtle, discrimination in Chicago where Till's family had migrated.The almost instant acquittal of the defendants by an all-white, all-male jury was shocking but not unexpected. Tyson describes a bizarre tactic of the defense to convey to the jury that Till, by his actions toward a white woman, deserved his fate. He reminds us of the pathological obsession of white Southerners over the possibility of sexual relations between blacks and whites.What is perhaps stunning to contemplate is that this systemic discrimination and injustice occurred within the lifetimes of many people living today. I was raised in the deep South during this era and remember vividly the overt signs and symbols of discrimination and subjugation of African-Americans. Even ten years after the 1955 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision I did not see a single black face in any school I attended. Segregation in public transit was as complete as it was in Rosa Park's time. "Whites Only" signs were everywhere. I like to remember that due to the influence of my northern-born parents I was aware of and repulsed by this gross inequity; I hope my memory is accurate. I do know that racism and discrimination, while not as blatant as in Till's time, is still present in our society, expressed in "dog whistle" ways by many in private and public life, even at the highest levels.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      While I enjoyed the book and some of the new information that I learned, it was not a paper turner, it took me far far longer to finish this book than was necessary as it is not a long book.

      In addition to discussing what happened to poor 14 year old Emmett Till in MS in 1955, most of the book is about how it came to be, the tradition of white supremacy, prior and later lynchings and murders and the generally deplorable way black folks were treated, so it is social history as well as a crime book.

      I have the author's other book which will be more personal as it is a horrible story of a murder that happened when he was a child.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Recently released and thoroughly developed, as well as excellently written, this book, like all other books about the murder/lynching of 14 year old Emmett Tilll leave me sad and very, very angry that the two who killed him were found not guilty.Emmett was from Chicago. Visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi, led to his murder. In this book, the wife of one of the killers admits that she embellished much of what she said that so angered her husband and his half brother to hunt him down and mame him so badly that both eyes were out of their sockets.His body was found stuck in the river with only his knees and feet shown. When rescued from the river, his bloated face was monster like, with a clear gun shot through his forehead. Three days in the water, as all of Money, Mississippi waited to see what the outcome would when/if the two murderous men were on trial.Found not guilty, just a short time later, Look magazine paid them $4,000 to tell the "true" story. They admitted to beating him senseless. He had it coming to him according to the sad, sad, majority of whites in that area of Mississippi. Later, those on the jury would say that they all knew and believed that they men were guilty.Of saddest revelation is the fact that lo these years later, the author found the wife of one of the murderers. she confessed that much of what happened did not happen. Perhaps Emmett made the taboo/mistake of allowing his black hand to touch her white hand when she gave him the change from his bubble gum purchase at the store she and her husband owned. But, no mater what, at the time of the writing of the book, she said nothing could warrant what happened to that boy.I think I'm finished reading books on this subject, it gets me so upset and so very, very sad.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      When asked to think of a picture of a truly heroic action, many people will think of the lone Chinese protester facing off a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square. After finishing Timothy B. Tyson’s magnificent new book, I now see a different picture. As photographs go it isn’t much but the story behind it makes shivers run down my spine. The image is of Moses Wright, a lanky black sharecropper and great uncle of 14-year-old Emmett Till. In the photograph the 64-year old Wright, standing tall in a white shirt, black tie, and suspenders, pointing across a Mississippi courtroom at the two white men charged with Till’s kidnapping an murder. This may not sound like much, but many people sitting in that courtroom were convinced that they were witnessing an act of suicide. No black man who enjoyed living would ever testify against a white man. And yet he did it. This is just one of many tremendous acts of courage described in this account of the lynching of Till and the trial that arguably served as a catalyst for the protests of the Civil Rights Era. I’ve often heard of the case but never knew before now how integral a part it played in the campaign to defeat Jim Crow. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I sincerely hope that everyone reads it. This was a very dark time in our history that we should never forget.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Author [[Timothy Tyson]] wrote his PhD thesis on a case very similar to Emmett Till's on the 1970 beating and murder of a black teenager named Henry Marrow. Although this occurred fifteen years after the Emmett Till lynching, it bore striking similarities. Perhaps that is why when 80 year old Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who made the allegations against Emmett Till that led to his brutal death, decided to set the record straight, she chose to talk with Mr. Tyson. In August 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till, on summer vacation in Alabama from the more liberal Chicago, may have accidently touched Mrs. Donham's hand when he paid for his purchases. He may have given what was described as a wolf whistle as he left the store. His friends said he had a stammer and often relied on whistling instead. But in her interview with the author, Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted that there was no obscene language, no grabbing her or attempted rape as she had reported to her husband and also testified as she sat as a witness in the murder trial.It was a horrific incident which would have gone unknown as just one more killing of a black person, except for the extreme bravery of Emmett's mother, Mamie, who insisted her son be brought home to Chicago for burial. She then had an open casket funeral so all could see the torture her baby had endured before he died. Emmett Till's name became a rallying point in the Civil Rights movement.Although the murderers were brought to trial, they were judged not guilty by an all white male jury. Subsequently, one of them was paid by Life magazine for his story – and he was brutally honest about what he had done, knowing he could not be re-tried.This book does a wonderful job of putting the horrific incident in the historical context, including the May 17, 1954 Brown Vs Board of Education Supreme Court decision to integrate schools. It was a time when blacks were beginning to assert their right to register to vote and were being violently prevented from doing so. It was a time of brutal, almost casual racism when white men thought they were justified to kill blacks for any or no reason.When told of the abduction “Sheriff Smith knew Roy and J. W. and immediately assumed that they had killed the boy and thrown his body in the river. ....(Sheriff Crosby Smith said) 'It was custom, what was being done around here in those days. We went by custom when something like that happened, and that's usually what they done to 'em '.” p 58And this quote:”According to William Bradford Huie, Milam later justified Till's lynching using the terms of violent racial and sexual politics: 'Just as long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are going to stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger even gets close to mentioning sex with a white, he's tired of livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we've got some rights .. .'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. God damn you, I'm going to make an example of you just so everybody can see how my folks stand.' “ p. 77And finally:“When we blame those who brought about the brutal murder of Emmett Till, we have to count President Eisenhower, who did not consider the national honor at stake when white Southerners prevented African Americans from voting: who would not enforce the edicts of the highest court in the land, telling Chief Justice Earl Warren, 'All opponents of desegregation are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in schools alongside some big, overgrown Negroes.' We must count Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., who demurred that the federal government had no jurisdiction in the political assassinations of George Lee and Lamar Smith that summer, thus not only preventing African Americans from voting, but also enabling Milam and Bryant to feel confident that they could murder a fourteen-year-old boy with impunity. Brownell, a creature of politics, likewise refused to intervene in the Till case. . . Above all, we have to count the millions of citizens of all colors and in all regions who knew about the rampant racial injustice in America and did nothing to end it. The black novelist Chester Himes wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Post the day he heard the news of Milam's and Bryan's acquittals: ' The real horror comes when your dead brain must face the fact that we as a nation don't want to stop. If we wanted to, we would.' ” p. 209Excellent book, well written and researched. Highly recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Bringing to life one of the foremost victims of the Jim Crow era is no easy task. But Tyson does an admirable job covering the reality of Emmett Till, a black teenager, and the horror that unfolded in Money, Mississippi, and the struggle for justice both in the courtroom and in the wider eyes of American society. The inclusion of interviewing Carolyn Bryant, the supposed victim of Till's "whistle", makes for a painful but vital angle to the story. Sixty years later, with Black Lives Matter showing that the more things change, the more they stay the same, "Blood of Emmett Till" is a hard read emotionally, but a very worthwhile one.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Blood of Emmett Till - Timothy B. Tyson

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