The Blood of Emmett Till Hardcover – January 31, 2017

The story is well known. In 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen year old boy from Chicago travels to Mississippi to spend the summer with relatives. He says something to Carolyn Bryant, a clerk in a small grocery store and whistles at her as she goes out to fetch a pistol from her car. Till is later kidnapped in the middle of the night, brutally tortured, killed, and his body is dumped in a river. We know so much about this story, compared to other lynchings, because of Till's mother. She refused to let the story be buried. She insisted that her son have an open casket funeral. She contacted Chicago black community leaders who helped spread the word around the world, creating a media event. Soon, Emmett Till is a well-known name, synonymous with lynchings. Much of this story has been told many times. What is new with Tyson's account is his interview with Carolyn Bryant. Even after reading the book, we still don't know exactly what happened between Emmett and Carolyn inside that grocery story. However, in the interview, Carolyn admits he didn't grab her around the waist. She doesn't remember all what what was said that evening. There have been so many years and the stories been told and retold, leaving her questioning what was said. However, one thing she is certain of, "Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him."(7) Carolyn's husband and brother-in-law were arrested shortly after Till's body was discovered by a fishermen. Their trial brought reporters from all over the world along with an African American congressman from Detroit. The trial became a showcase of life in the segregated South. (They had to have separate reporter tables in the courtroom for African-American press). Although there were irregularities in the handling of the case, such as the Sheriff visiting a key witness to suggest that he think about what he testifies in court, the trial itself goes smoothly and appears fair. Yet the jury only deliberated a short time before returning a not-guilty verdict. Although many expected the verdict, most knew the men were guilty and a few years later, with them safe from another trial, they admitted as much. Most of the the African-Americans who testified in the trial, in fear for their lives, immediately leave Mississippi and relocated up north. In telling the story, Tyson doesn't just show the horrifying conditions of African-Americans in the South. He tells of the conditions in the North, especially in segregated Chicago, where Till grew up. There are also questions left hanging such as what happened to the two black men who worked on the plantation Carolyn Bryant's brother-in-law ran, who helped subdue Till in the back of the truck as they rode around in the early morning hours looking for a place to do the terrible deed.Although the book is well written, it is not an easy story to read. Yet, it is a story that needs to be told and retold. This event only happened a little over sixty years ago. In the Epilogue, Tyson attempts to bridge the events in 1955 with the current “Black Lives Matter” campaigns. As a member of the dominant culture, this book provides interesting insights into what other have had to endure not that long again. This is the third book I've read by Timothy Tyson. The first was Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and It's Legacy, which he co-edited with David Cecelski. In 2007, I read and reviewed Blood Done Signed My Name. Tyson seems to have a thing for books with blood in the title, yet sadly much of the racial history of our country is stained with blood.

In the summer of 1955, I rode the Illinois Central City of New Orleans streamliner from St. Louis Union Station to Mississippi to visit aunts, uncles, cousins, and my grandmother in three different parts of the state, all in the Delta. St. Louis was served by a connecting train section that was coupled into the main Chicago-NOLA train at Carbondale, IL. I returned the same way. That was not my first such trip.Some days after my return home that year, one Emmett Till boarded the City in Chicago and traveled to Mississippi to visit an uncle and his cousins. It was his first trip. Emmett, who was little older than I was, returned a few days later on the Illinois Central Panama Limited, which traveled the same route as the City of New Orleans.He returned in a coffin.The story of Emmett's kidnapping and murder, and of the subsequent trial, was widely publicized, through somehow I remembered nothing about it. It has been covered in non-fiction books, and it has inspired fiction. Songs have been written about it. I did not know until this year that Bobbie Gentry's Ode to Billie Joe was inspired by the murder of Till.I recently came across across another book. I had felt no need to read any more about it, but I am glad that I did. The title is off-putting, but the book really is worth reading.Timothy B. Tyson's book The Blood of Emmett Till is extremely well documented and very thorough. And it is very, very readable indeed. But there is something else that sets this book apart from the others.Tyson was contacted by one Carolyn Bryant Donham for an interview, and what he learned from the interview made its way into the book. MS Donham was the wife of Roy Bryant, one of the kidnappers and killers. Her description of an encounter with Till in her store--Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market in Money, MS--was what instigated the crime in the first place, and it had a lot to do with why so many people in the area felt that the killing had been justified.It has been widely reported that Donham has since stated that she lied about an important part of that she had said, and that she could no longer say with any certainty whether other parts had been true.So much for that. Tyson's interview with Donham provided much more. We learn, among other things, that her husband and her brother in law, JW Milam, both of whom later confessed to the kidnapping and to the murder, had believed that they were effectively immune from prosecution because of their close relationship with Tallahatchie County sheriff Clarence Strider.Other than some additional input from Donham and other sources, the account in the book is entirely consistent what that set forth in Devery S. Anderson's Emmett Till: the Murder that Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.It does, I think, provide little more insight into race relations in Chicago in years past, though Anderson mentioned that also. It just might raise a few eyebrows today, but it was said at the time by African American labor leaders in Chicago that Emmett Till would have been no less safe in Greenwood, MS, than in Trumbull Park in Chicago.Again, I strongly recommend the book.I will allow, however, that those who remember having traveled along the various rural two lane macadam, black-top, and concrete roads past the cotton fields in the region during that era, crossing bayous and rivers on old iron truss bridges with wooden decks that clattered to high heaven, and going through some of the towns and cities that figure in the story, might appreciate the book just a bit more than might some others.

The mrs. Bryant should have paid for her injustice.she lied. He was just a 14 yr old boy.. she must have had as much hatred in her heart as the killers did!

The book is interesting to read about the boy who was killed by the two men

Une bonne mise en contexte de ce 'fait divers' en tous points horrible ... ce qui l'a rendu possible, ce qu'il a rendu possible ... pas de photos, pas de sensationnalisme, et comme pour d'autres affaires, le manque de certitudes sur ce qui s'est vraiment passé : le meurtre d'un adolescent de 14 ans, et ce qui lui a servi de prétexte ...

While horrifying and terrifying, this book is very accessible - particularly for someone like me who is not American and unaware of the essential detail of its very charged history. It’s very well referenced which l greatly appreciated, and moves very effectively and efficiently between the human side of the Emmet Till murder and the greater context, and what that means for us today. Thoroughly recommend.

Bon livre mais la couverture est arrivée déchirée. Pas très sérieux.