A review by nevclue
The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson

4.0

Detailed and contextualized history of the lynching and trial of Emmett Till. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the book is how Tyson lays out the extraordinary determination and courage and confluence of events that it took to make Emmett Till's death the turning point that it was. Because it was far from a given that the brutal murder of a black child in Mississippi in the 50s by white men would result in national outrage. Tyson ties the complicity of the entire populace, and particularly the structures of power in the legal and justice system, in the Emmett Till case to the present and the ways in which black lives are still the site of state-sanctioned and community-accepted violence.