First published 2017
Timothy Tyson examines the 1955 lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta. White men murdered the Chicago teenager during a surge of racial violence that followed the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling against school segregation. Tyson combines detective work with political analysis to uncover new evidence about the case. He reveals a startling confession from the woman whose accusations led to Till's death. The book traces how Till's murder inspired Rosa Parks just weeks later when she refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery. It shows how Black students who identified as "the Emmett Till generation" used his memory to fuel the sit-in movement five years after his death. Tyson moves beyond Till as a symbol to recover the real boy behind America's most infamous hate crime. He demonstrates how this single act of violence shaped the civil rights movement and exposes the ways racial injustice has corrupted American democracy.
Genres: history, 20th-century, african-american, non-fiction, biography-memoir, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, social-commentary
Setting: Chicago, Mississippi Delta, Montgomery
Period: 1950s, 1955
305 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: racism, violence