At 2:00 A.M. on August 28, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, visiting from Chicago, was abducted from his great-uncle's cabin in Money, Mississippi, and never seen alive again. When his battered and bloated corpse floated to the surface of the Tallahatchie River three days later and two local white men were arrested for his murder, young Till's death was primed to become the spark that set off the civil rights movement. With a collection of more than one hundred documents spanning almost half a century, Christopher Metress retells Till's story in a unique and daring way. Juxtaposing news accounts and investigative journalism with memoirs, poetry, and fiction, this documentary narrative not only includes material by such prominent figures as Hodding Carter, Chester Himes, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Eldridge Cleaver, Bob Dylan, John Edgar Wideman, Lewis Nordan, and Michael Eric Dyson, but it also contains several previously unpublished works - among them a newly discovered Langston Hughes poem - and a generous selection of hard-to-find documents never before collected. Exploring the means by which historical events become part of the collective social memory, The Lynching of Emmett Till is both an anthology that tells an important story and a narrative about how we come to terms with key moments in history.
The Emmett Till story is one of the most unpleasant and gruesome in American history, but this book is one of the best I've read on the subject. It is a compilation of contemporary news articles, poems, songs, essays, and remembrances of the Till case (one is a 1955 interview with Mrs. Mamie Till, Emmett's mom). The side of the bigots is also given, as well as a disgusting interview with one of the murderers, but it helps the book to become a more complete anthology showing the sickness of the murderers (and others who thought like them) as well as the good guys in the case. As a historian, I'll admit that this does not make pleasant reading, but it is a fascinating look at what racism could cause and is a worthy read.
This is an excellent reader, not a narrative
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
This is an excellent collection of documents relating to the lynching of Emmett Till. However, it should be noted that Metress does not provide any real commentary on the documents which he has selected. This is a good book for those interested in writing on the Till or the southern press, and for those with the background knowledge to put the documents presented in a contextual backgound.
I Take it Back
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
Earlier I gave a lukewarm review of this book. In hindsight, the book just was not what I expected. I expected a more narrative history and was disappointed when I did not get it. But that was not the author's intent. What is done here, is done exceptionally well. Truly fascinating. I'm so glad I picked it back up so I can correct the record.
Money, Mississippi
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
Some might say the 1950s should provide the history, while we in the 21st century provide the analysis -- particularly in matters of race, where the discourse of fifty years ago might be thought too embryonic to add anything to today's sophisticated discussions. Think again. More than half the pages of Chris Metress's `The Lynching of Emmett Till' are devoted to writings contemporary with the famous case. These pieces display not only the passion and immediacy you would expect -- and which are invaluable for the modern reader -- but also great shrewdness, subtlety, and eloquence, as they report on what one writer calls a "total, unavenged obliteration." (Not every contributor is sympathetic to Till, by the way; just one example is an announcement from the American Anti-Communist Militia claiming that Till is alive and well in California!)The rest of the book, made up of pieces written in the years since, shows how the Till tragedy has lingered in the American imagination and conscience. Metress collects remarkable meditations on the Till case by Anne Moody, John Edgar Wideman, Langston Hughes, among others. It is quite incredible how Till has loomed in these writers' thoughts. (The book even includes a really awful - and, fortunately, disowned -- song by Bob Dylan.) Metress's commentary fully situates the reader in all the various contexts but is never overbearing. This is a book of voices; Metress is a superb listener.
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