The Blood of Emmett Till

Emmett Till, an African American adolescent, is murdered by two white men in the town of Money, Mississippi, in 1955. He supposedly made a pass at a young white woman named Carolyn Bryant, who is married to one of the two men, Roy Bryant. Author Timothy Tyson begins with a conversation he has with Carolyn Bryant many years later, when she’s in her eighties. He asks her what happened. She confesses that she lied during the trial. Emmett Till never touched her, yet she reported during the trial that he brazenly spoke of sex to her and also placed his hands on her waist and blocked her way. She tells Tyson “that part is not true” (6). In newspapers, much was made of the trial and of Till’s “attempted rape” (5). The false reporting and lies created an atmosphere of hysteria that ended with the two perpetrators of the crime being acquitted. Tyson argues that Till’s murder ignited the civil rights movement and launched a “national coalition” (2) devoted to ending racism in the American South.