Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement

by Devery S Anderson, Julian Bond (Foreword by)

Overview

Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement offers the first truly comprehensive account of the 1955 murder and its aftermath. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. Anderson utilizes documents that had never been available to previous researchers, such as the trial transcript, long-hidden depositions by key players in the case, and interviews given by Carolyn Bryant to the FBI in 2004 (her first in fifty years), as well as other recently revealed FBI documents. Anderson also interviewed family members of the accused killers, most of whom agreed to talk for the first time, as well as several journalists who covered the murder trial in 1955.

Till's death and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement. Like no other event in modern history, the death of Emmett Till provoked people all over the United States to seek social change. Anderson's exhaustively researched book is also the basis for HBO's mini-series produced by Jay-Z, Will Smith, Casey Affleck, Aaron Kaplan, James Lassiter, Jay Brown, Ty Ty Smith, John P. Middleton, Rosanna Grace, David B. Clark, and Alex Foster, which is currently in active development.

For six decades the Till story has continued to haunt the South as the lingering injustice of Till's murder and the aftermath altered many lives. Fifty years after the murder, renewed interest in the case led the Justice Department to open an investigation into identifying and possibly prosecuting accomplices of the two men originally tried. Between 2004 and 2005, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted the first real probe into the killing and turned up important information that had been lost for decades. Anderson covers the events that led up to this probe in great detail, as well as the investigation itself.

This book will stand as the definitive work on Emmett Till for years to come. Incorporating much new information, the book demonstrates how the Emmett Till murder exemplifies the Jim Crow South at its nadir. The author accessed a wealth of new evidence. Anderson made a dozen trips to Mississippi and Chicago over a ten-year period to conduct research and interview witnesses and reporters who covered the trial. In Emmett Till Anderson corrects the historical record and presents this critical saga in its entirety.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496814777
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Series:	Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	1,158,474
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.35(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Foreword Julian Bond xiii

Preface to the Paperback Edition xv

Preface xxi

Prologue: Through a Glass, Darkly xxvii

Part 1 In Black and White

1 Mother and Son 5

2 Mississippi Welcomes Emmett Till 22

3 Murder Heard Round the World 39

4 Countdown 64

5 Tallahatchie Trial, Part 1 85

6 Tallahatchie Trial, Part 2 123

7 Protests, Rumors, and Revelations 166

8 Clamor, Conflict, and Another Jury 198

9 The Look Story and Its Aftermath 220

10 Never the Same 252

Part 2 In Living Color

11 Revival 287

12 Seeking Justice in a New Era 315

13 The Legacy of Emmett Till 344

Epilogue: Seeing Clearly 357

Appendix: Piecing the Puzzle 361

Notes 381

Bibliography 485

Index 529