The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative
Christopher MetressBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
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Cleaver, Bob Dylan, John Edgar Wideman, Lewis Nordan, and Michael Eric Dyson, but it also contains several previously unpublished works—among them a newly discovered Langston Hughes poem—and a generous selection of hard-to-find documents never before collected.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.
University of Virginia Press
Synopsis
It has been claimed that the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 was the spark that set off the American civil rights movement. In this volume, Metress (English, Samford U.) weaves together excerpts from newspapers and editorials of the day, which provide sometimes-contradictory accounts of the murder and trial. The anthology also contains selections from poems, songs, interviews, essays, and memoirs relating to the incident. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Editorials
The Washington Post
[A]nthologizes the Till case: the murder, the trial, the newspaper coverage, the struggle the killing sparked between racists and rights activists, and the passing of the case into the realms of both history and myth.
Quarterly Black Review
[R]iveting..In compiling the facts of the case, editor Christopher Metress has presented a full and complete account of one of America's most brutal hate crimes.