THOUGHTS ON EMMETT TILL DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH

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The Blood Of Emmett Till, by Timothy B. Tyson (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2017, 291 pages).

Book Review by Dennis Moore

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

  • Sir Winston Churchill

February 22, 2017 (San Diego) - The Blood Of Emmett Till is perhaps the most painful and disturbing book that I have ever read, and I am a professional writer and book reviewer, having written more than 200 book reviews. Two of those book reviews contributed towards the authors winning the NAACP Image Award in Literature; Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Gregory Reed’s Obama Talks Back. It parallels Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America by James Allen and Hilton Als, which I also had written a review of.

Timothy B. Tyson’s The Blood Of Emmett Tyson book has stirred my soul, and resonates with me for so many profound reasons, as the subject of this soul searching book was born in Chicago and I spent the majority of my life there. And my children were born there. As a matter of fact, it was my daughter Brandy that brought this book to my attention.

Timothy B. Tyson is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke Divinity School, and adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of Blood Done Sign My Name, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion; and Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, winner of the James A. Rawley Prize for best book on race and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for best first book in U.S. History from the Organization of American Historians. He serves on the executive boards of the North Carolina NAACP and the UNC Center for Civil Rights.

The Blood Of Emmett Till is a horror story of epic dimensions. It speaks to man’s inhumanity to man! How could a human being kill and mutilate a little boy that had just turned 14, ostensibly for whistling at a white woman or “getting out of his place?” A dog or any other animal would not have been killed and disfigured as depicted in the picture of young Emmett Till!  

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.

The national coalition organized to protest the Till lynching became the foundation of the modern civil rights movement. 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, the Emmett Till generation, forever marked by the vicious killing of a boy their own age, launched a sit-in campaign that turned the struggle into a mass movement. “I can hear the blood of Emmett Till as it calls from the ground,” shouted a black preacher in Albany, Georgia.

But what actually happened to Emmett Till – not the icon of injustice but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, Timothy Tyson’s The Blood of Emmett Till draws on a wealth of new evidence, including the only interview ever given by Carolyn Bryant, the white woman in whose name Till was killed. Tyson’s gripping narrative upends what we thought we knew about the most notorious racial crime in American history.

There is a sad and tragic irony to this book and story by Tyson, as I spent most of my life in Chicago where Emmett Till was born, and actually travelled to the Mississippi Delta area where Till was murdered and his body was thrown in the Tallahatchie River – while on “Freedom Ride II” in a bus caravan from Chicago in an attempt to get elected the first black to Congress since Reconstruction.

The aforementioned “Freedom Ride II” was a bus caravan from Chicago of more than 200 volunteers some 30 years ago – orchestrated and comprised of Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, Congressman Gus Savage of Illinois, Ben Hooks the President of the NAACP, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jr. the President of Operation PUSH. We left Chicago from the offices of Operation PUSH, determined to make a change and difference in history, heading for the Mississippi Delta, the same general area where Emmett Till was murdered.

We were to disperse and live in the homes of other blacks in the Mississippi Delta, namely, Greenwood, Indianola, Grenada, Yazoo City, Jackson, Clarksdale and others. I actually stayed with an aunt in Grenada that I had never known previously.

I recall a particular instance when we were engaged in “Chicago style” campaigning, and I handed out a “poll ticket” with selected candidates to vote for to a white man near a polling place, and he told me that that “I could take that poll ticket and wipe my ass with it.” Needless to say, I was stunned and didn’t know what to say, so I just laughed and went about my business. This was my introduction to Mississippi hospitality, as it was my first and last time in the state where Emmett Till was murdered.

The author of The Blood Of Emmett Till is meticulous and is well-documented in his research for this book. His interview of Carolyn Bryant is insightful, and certainly a difference maker in history. In his interview with Bryant, some 60 years after the murder of Emmett Till by her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, she stated: “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.” Tyson describes Carolyn Bryant in his book as “the mouthpiece of a monstrous lie.”

Also, in his interview with Carolyn Bryant, which she requested perhaps to clear her conscience, Tyson states: “As I sat drinking her coffee and eating her pound cake, Carolyn Bryant Donham handed me a copy of the trial transcript and the manuscript of her unpublished memoir, More Than a Wolf Whistle: The Story of Carolyn Bryant Donham. I promised to deliver our interview and these documents to the appropriate archive, where future scholars would be able to use them. In her memoir she recounts the story she told at the trial using imagery from the classic Southern racist horror movie of the Black Beast rapist. But about her testimony that Till had grabbed her around the waist and uttered obscenities, she now told me, ‘That part’s not true.’” Read Carolyn Bryant’s trial testimony here.

Ms. Donham told him that soon after the killing, her husband’s family hid her away, moving her from place to place for days, to keep her from talking to law enforcement. “The circumstances under which she told the story were coercive,” Dr. Tyson said. “She’s horrified by it.” There’s clearly a great burden of guilt and sorrow.

Perhaps also, why Carolyn Bryant had decided to do the interview with Tyson, goes back to her observation of Mamie Bradley (Till) some 60 years earlier, as she testified in court about the murder of her son. Across the courtroom Carolyn Bryant watched in awe as Mamie Bradley (Till) testified. “I had all these things running through my mind,” she recalled. “My husband’s going to the penitentiary, maybe for life. I have children to support.” In her memory, however, her fears did not squelch her astonishment at the African American mother across the room. She could not stop thinking about her. “Here is this woman whose child has been brutalized, just brutalized every kind of way – how could she stand it? I don’t know how she went through the trial the way she did.” Read Mamie Bradley’s (Till) testimony here.

Despite the eye witness accounts of Willie Reed and his sworn and trancribed testimony here, the all-white and all-male jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam.

Tyson’s The Blood Of Emmett Till resonates with me and momentarily tested my faith due to a passage in this powerful book and the quote of Amzie Moore, a black World War II veteran who lived in the Mississippi Delta where and at the time Emmett Till was murdered. Tyson states and quotes Moore: “To Moore the color line in Mississippi seemed so stark and inexorable as to seem the very will of the Creator. ‘For a long time,’ he remembered, ‘I had the idea that a man with white skin was superior because it appeared to me that he had everything. And I figured if God would justify the white man having everything, that God had put him in a position to be the best.’ He told an interviewer, ‘I just thought [whites] were good enough, that God loved them enough, to give them all these things that they had. And that, evidently, there had to be something wrong with me.’” Incredulous! 

The author points out that according to a William Bradford Huie, J.W. Milam later, and after he and Roy Bryant had been acquitted by an all-white jury, justified Till’s lynching using terms of violent 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 woman, he’s tired o’ liven’. 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.”

This mood and state of mind of J.W. Milam was exemplified in a movie made and directed by Roger Corman, and starring William Shatner of Star Trek fame, some 55 years ago in the small town in Missouri that I was born in, Charleston, before spending the majority of my life in Chicago. This movie, The Intruder, depicts the forced integration of a high school in Charleston that I graduated from, and many of my black neighbors and friends actually had roles in this movie pictured here.

The aforementioned J.W. Milam, after he and Roy Bryant had been acquitted by an all-white jury, actually admitted in an interview for Look Magazine in 1956 how he murdered Emmett Till, after having him strip naked and carry the 150 pound cotton gin fan that would be placed around his neck with barbed wire, to weigh him down after he had been shot near his right ear and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. This, and the earlier beating administered in a barn by Milam and Bryant, which 18-year-old black boy Willie Reed testified in court, contributed to the gruesome condition and the pictures seen of Emmett Till seen around the world.

Tyson actually indicates in his book The Blood Of Emmett Till that William Bradford Huie of Look Magazine offered and paid Roy Bryant and J.W. Bryant $4,000.00 to tell their story of how they murdered Emmett Till, after they had been acquitted by an all-white and all-mail jury. They admitted that they both took turns smashing Till across the head with their .45s.

This book by Tyson is full of ironies – one of which is the execution by hanging of Emmett Till’s father, Louis Till, while he was in the Army just 10 years earlier than Till’s lynching in 1955, allegedly for murder and rape while serving in Italy. The ring that Louis Till was wearing, which had the initials “LT” emblazoned on it, which was later returned to Chicago and claimed by his son Emmett, was actually used to help identify the gruesome remains of young Emmett as he was retrieved from the Tallahatchie River. The case has refused to fade, revived in a long list of writings and works of art, as told by Richard-Perez-Pena in the New York Times, including recently, in a book by John Edgar Wideman; Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File.

John Edgar Wideman actually alludes to a conspiracy theory in his book, theorizing that: “Each time the October 14 date appeared, I wondered if I had discovered a smoking gun. Doesn’t a conspiracy to violate Private Louis Till’s right to privacy originate there, on that day in October 1955, just after the Sumner trial when Till’s confidential military record is declassified and the way cleared for the file’s contents to be leaked to the press. Just in time to sabotage any likelihood a Mississippi grand jury might convene in November and decide to try Milam and Bryant on kidnapping charges.”

Tyson's The Blood Of Emmett Till opens the door in another way to Wideman's book; Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File, in a quote by Wideman in which he states: "If Louis Till had been around to school his son about the South, about black boys and white men up north and down south, would Emmett have returned safely from his trip to Money, Mississippi, started up public high in Chicago, earned good grades like I did, eluded the fate of his father, maybe even become president of the United States. But the flame of his father's fate draws Emmett like a moth. Son flies backward and forward simultaneously like the sankofa bird because part of the father's fate is never to be around to protect, advise, and surpervise his son, the fate of father and son to orphan each other always. Fathers and sons. Sons and fathers. An eternal cycle of missing and absence. Bright wings flutter like a dark room lit suddenly by a match." Louis Till pictured here.

Another irony about this story is the fact that my 99-year-old aunt in Gary, Indiana just recently told me that her and my father, Dennis Moore, Sr., told me that they both were born in the Mississippi Delta area, approximately 30 miles from Money, Mississippi, and where Emmett Till was murdered and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. My Aunt Hattie White also told me just last week in our telephone call from Gary, Indiana, that when she and her brother, my father, lived in that area many years ago they had to rush him on a train to get back to the army for fear of his life being in jeopardy – somewhat similar to that of Emmett Till – due to a white person’s concern and misunderstanding over $10.00. My father could have suffered the same fate as Emmett Till, if he had not gotten out of Mississippi when he did.

As chronicled and profiled in the aforementioned Without Sanctuary, thousands of blacks had been lynched across the country. It was even memorialized in this song by Billy Holiday; Strange Fruit here. What happened to Emmett Till and so many other blacks is this nation’s shame, and is also profiled in this YouTube video by an Emory University professor here.

Tyson points out that there were more than 50,000 people to view the mangled body of Emmett Till at the A. A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home in my hometown of Chicago, on 41st Street and Cottage Grove, on that first day of viewing when he was brought back from Mississippi. The author further points out in The Blood Of Emmett Till that in subsequent days those in Chicago that viewed the 14-year-old’s body was upwards of 250,000 in estimates given by the Chicago Defender Newspaper.   

This is such an intriguing book by Tyson, and a painful reminder of history and man’s inhumanity to man, a book that resonates with me for some many profound and heartfelt reasons – one that I highly recommend.

Dennis Moore has been the Associate Editor of the East County Magazine in San Diego and the book review editor of SDWriteway, an online newsletter for writers in San Diego that has partnered with the East County Magazine. He is also the author of a book about Chicago politics; “The City That Works: Power, Politics and Corruption in Chicago. Mr. Moore can be contacted at contractsagency@gmail.com or you can follow him on Twitter at: @DennisMoore8.

 

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Comments

Emmett Till Review

I recently became aware that the Emmett Till case was being reopened, it stirred up familiar feelings of inequality, racism, and evil that still resonates in this, and other countries. This story always makes my stomach ball up in knots. I am always so sad when I see the pictures of Emmett Till wondering how excruciating it must have been for him to experience such vile actions by hateful men. Men who bore children, and their children bore children, who continued to brew hate and evil to what we see today. I have two young men that I love with everything inside of me, and my heart aches when I think about what that mother felt as she looked upon her disfigured, and tortured son. These stories are not just tales of the past, someone went through these horrific ordeals throughout history. Thank you for reminding us that we must be watchful, prayerful, and vigilant, as we band together to prevent this from happening again. We must no longer remain silent. I recently released my second novel, a fiction thriller entitled "The Sounds of Silence Are The Loudest" that hint on some of the atrocities that we remain silent about; children missing, organ harvesting, trafficking, mind control, ritual abuse. It is happening present day, not just a tale of fiction. May we never become numb, and so used to hearing about sex crimes, trafficking, and abuse that we feel helpless to do or say anything about it. Great review Dennis!! Thank you! Cortina Jackson Author of "On Earth As It Is In Hell," and "The Sounds of Silence Are The Loudest." www.cortinajackson.com

Till author gave up notes

Weeks after he published a book about the brutal slaying of Emmett Till, a North Carolina author received a call from FBI agents asking about his interview with a key witness who acknowledged lying about her interactions with the black teen. Not long after that, Duke University sholar Timothy Tyson said; he turned over interview recordings and other research materials for his 2017 book on the 1955 case that shocked the nation and helped build momentum for the civil rights movement.

Book fuels renewed Till probe

The reopening of the Till case was disclosed in a federal report sent to lawmakers in March that said the Justice Department had received unspecified "new information." The report's contents weren't widely known until Thursday. A potential witness with the 14-year-old Till in the store that day, cousin Wheeler Parker, said that he has talked with law enforcement about the case in recent months.

Great review. It was

Great review. It was difficult for me to complete it it's entirety but I made it through. Mr. Moore asked the question "How could a human being kill and mutilate a little boy that had just turned 14, ostensibly for whistling at a white woman or “getting out of his place?” Answer: Easy, blacks or Negroes at that time were considered three-fifths of a man!! sub-human, who had no rights, so they could be lynched, burned, beaten to a pulp and the accusers if white would be found innocent!! frightening but that was normal! I found that the pictures, as well as all the links and YouTube pieces added credence to the story and made the review an excellent one. It's difficult to look at a 14 year old in a coffin, but this 14 year old looked like a man in his 60's!! beating him beyond recognition was overkill and was to certainly send a message. I often wonder how Carolyn Bryant, the white woman in whose name Till was killed lived with that guilt, I wished she had a backbone and/or some fortitude and spoke about this incident years ago, but the fact that she is putting a memoir together says something about the human heart. Great job Mr. Moore, this one was difficult for me. America has come a long way but still has a long way to go. Submitted by Jacqueline Carr - Author of "Quiet Thoughts" and " A Selected Few Just For You"t

"The Blood of Emmett Till" - Federal Government Investigates

A 2017 book that revealed lies by a key witness in the Emmett Till case has prompted the U.S. government to renew its investigationinto the brutal 1955 slaying, a federal official said Thursday, according to an Associated Press story by Jay Reeves in the Antelope Valley Press based in Palmdale, California. The reopening of the case had stayed quiet until the contents of a federal report came to light earlier in the day. Till relatives and social justice activists welcomed a fresh look at the killing that shocked the country and stoked the civil rights movement, but acknowledged that the passage of time could hamper justice.

 

The book "The Blood of Emmett Till" by Timothy B. Tyson quotes a white woman, Carolyn Dunham, as saying during a 2008 interview that she wasn't truthful when she testified that the black teen grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances at a Mississippi store six decades ago.

Emmett Till

Firstly, I would like to respond to the post by the person described as "bubblelips". We all wish we could make incidents such as the Emmett Till tragedy disappear from our collective memory. Unfortunately, the past is an immutable fact hewn in stone. What we can do is pray for this nation and for the consciences of each of us to purge ourselves of the inability to empathize. To forgive; and to pray for all who find it impossible to love those who, racially and/or ethnically, differ from us. Secondly, the only thing I can add to this horror story that has not yet been said is this, quoted from the Holy Bible, KJV, the Book of Acts, Chapter 17, Verse 24: "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands." Verse 26 further states: "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." The only way to overcome hatred, as the esteemed Dr. King so eloquently stated, is with love. And If any justification is needed to "keep rehashing" such facts, it is in the statement in which Dennis Moore who wrote this excellent review, quotes from Sir Winston Churchill, that, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” As a person of Native American heritage(Cherokee/Seminole), I am well aware of how racial hatred can tear apart a nation. Greatness and godliness begins singularly, in one heart at a time. May each of us say to ourselves, "It begins with me." ---KB Schaller, Author, 100+ Native American Women Who Changed the World

President Joe Biden honors Emmett Till with National Monument!

In a ceremony today at the White House President Joe Biden honored the life and legacy of Emmett Till and his mother Mamie by indicating that a momument would be erected in his memory in Mississippi, where he was brutally murdered as a teenager, and in my hometown of Chicago, where his funeral was held.

I'v deleted Bubblelips account.

His racist statements, foul language and name calling violating at least three of our site rules for posting.  People are free to voice their opinions and diasgree with stories or reviews, but hate speech and denigrating others is not acceptable. We ask that all readers engage in civil conversation and be respectful of others.  Normally we give readers a warning first but this post was so vile and filled with hate speech that we made an exeption to our normal rule and deleted the individual's posting privilege.

 

 

"The Blood Of Emmett Till"

Miriam, unfortunately I did not get the opportunity to view the comments of "Bubblelips" before you decided to delete their account. I can only imagine its contents, as people tend to take or make exception to anything of a religious, political or racial nature. Also and unfortunately, as a writer and book reviewer that has written more than 200 book reviews, I cover all genres and try to be as balanced as possible. You might recall several years ago when I wrote a review of Vincent Bugliosi's book "Divinity of Doubt" in this East County Magazine, an a particular reader got so incensed because of my Christian leanings and viewpoint that they chastised you and said that they would never read our magazine again. Admittedly, we seem to be living in a divided country, and people are going to take exception to virtually everything written or said, but as a free press and being respectful of everyone's 1st Admendment rights, we have to find a better way to disagree other than to throw around vile and racist statements. One should be made aware that my reviews covers the gamut, from children's books to books about music, as well as social satire, along with politics and religion. In an attempt to give balance to my writing, I actually felt compelled to write a review of a book that was very critical of Hillary Clinton; "Clinton Cash", after I had earlier written a review of her book that was very favorable; "Hard Choices". I now have a bit of remorse, thinking that somehow it cost her the recent Presidential, especially after seeing the author of "Clinton Cash" on national TV talking about how Bill & Hillary were being swayed by money influences, including making deals with Russia. We really have to be more sophisticated and tolerant of opinions of others, and excise respect for them. 

Excellent Review

I find these kinds of stories very hard to read, but I'm sure they are even harder to write. How anyone can injure or kill another person is way beyond my ability to understand. The horrors that many people, especially African American people, have been subjected to in the past and right up until current times, is tragic and sad. I would imagine it would be hard to research, and then write, one of many such horrific events of our history. This is great interview. I will not be able to read the book, however. If that makes me a coward, I'm sorry. But when I read horrible things like this I develop such a tightness in my chest and find it very hard to breathe. I am a romance writer, after all.

"The Blood Of Emmett Till"

Carole, you are right, this book is so very hard to read for all the obvious reasons you mentioned! It was also so very hard to research, for it pointed me in the direction of another book, about the killing of Emmett Till's father Louis Till; "Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File" by John Edgar Wideman. I am actually scheduled to do a phone interview tomorrow with Mr. Wideman for a review that I plan of his book. I certainly understand your position, as most people do not have the stomach for such horrific acts as depicted in this book, but as someone that has written more than 200 book reviews I cover all genres, including my earlier review of your book which I was honored to write a review of. Keep doing what you do best, writing romance novels.