Employing never-before-used historical materials, the authors of
"Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press" reveal how Mississippi
journalists both expressed and shaped public opinion in the
aftermath of the 1955 Emmett Till murder. Combing small-circulation
weeklies as well as large-circulation dailies, Davis W. Houck and
Matthew A. Grindy analyze the rhetoric at work as the state
attempted to grapple with a brutal, small-town slaying. Initially
coverage tended to be sympathetic to Till, but when the case became
a clarion call for civil rights and racial justice in Mississippi,
journalists reacted.
Newspapers both reported on the Till investigation and
editorialized on its protagonists. Within days, the Till case
transcended the specifics of a murder in the Delta. Coverage
wrestled with such complex cultural matters as the role of the
press, class, gender, and geography in the determination of guilt
and innocence.
"Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press" provides a careful
examination of the courtroom testimony given in Sumner,
Mississippi, and the trial's conclusion as reported by the state's
newspapers. The book closes with an analysis of how Mississippi has
attempted to come to terms with its racially troubled past by, in
part, memorializing Emmett Till in and around the Delta.
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