Everyone knows the story of the murder of young Emmett Till. In
August 1955, a fourteen-year-old Chicago boy was murdered in
Mississippi for having-supposedly-flirted with a white woman named
Carolyn Bryant, who was working behind the counter of a store.
Emmett was taken from the home of a relative later that night by
white men; three days later, his naked body was recovered in the
Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a cotton-gin fan. Till's
killers were acquitted, but details of what had happened to him
became public; the story gripped the country and sparked outrage.
Black journalists drove down to Mississippi and risked their lives
interviewing townsfolk, encouraging frightened witnesses, spiriting
those in danger out of the region, and above all keeping the news
cycle turning. It continues to turn. The murder has been the
subject of books and documentaries, rising and falling in number
with anniversaries and tie-ins, and shows no sign of letting up.
Some have argued that his lynching did more to launch the Civil
Rights movement than Rosa Parks or even Brown v. Board of
Education. If that argument holds, it is in large part because of
the photographs of Emmett Till-the before-photo of a young man
jaunty with prospects, and the after-photos of the grotesquely
disfigured face of a young man beaten to death and shot. The
photographs, first reprinted in African-American journals and
newspapers, didn't make their way to their white equivalents until
much later, but they focused attention on the horrible, visceral
truth of racism. It became impossible to turn away from them. The
Till murder continues to haunt the American conscience. Fifty years
later, in 2005, the FBI reopened the case. New papers and testimony
have come to light, and several participants, including Till's
mother, Mamie Till Mobley, have published autobiographies. Using
this new evidence and a broadened historical context, Elliott J.
Gorn delves into facets of the case never before studied and
considers how and why the story of Emmett Till still resonates, and
likely always will. Even as it marked a turning point, Gorn shows,
hauntingly, it reveals how old patterns of thought and behavior
linger in new faces, and how deeply embedded racism in America
remains. Gorn does full justice to both Emmett and the Till
Case-the boy and the symbol-and shows how and why their
intersection illuminates a number of crossroads: of north and
south, black and white, city and country, industrialization and
agriculture, rich and poor, childhood and adulthood. This is the
best book ever written on Emmett Till.
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