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A review by kevin_shepherd
Remembering Emmett Till by Dave Tell
4.0
To be honest, I am a little uneasy commenting on a book about Emmett Till. To me, this feels like cultural appropriation. It’s one thing to read about the icons and martyrs of the civil rights movement, it is quite another thing to talk about those individuals from the perspective of a white gaze. My conscious intent here is to tread lightly and respectfully. -KS
“The Delta was a place where Planters wore suits when they lynched you. They drank illegal whiskey from a clean glass. They delicately wiped their mouths on monogrammed handkerchiefs after they spat on you.” -Yvette Johnson
The Ghosts of Mississippi
It’s best to begin a description of Dave Tell’s Remembering Emmett Till by describing what it is not. It is NOT a biography of the barely fourteen year old Black child who, on the 28th of August, 1955, was kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered by racist degenerates in rural Mississippi. Nor is it a memorial to Emmett’s memory or a frank condemnation of the Jim Crow laws and segregationist class structures that facilitated Emmett’s abduction and lynching. Rather than all that, Tell’s book is a detailed philosophical and legal analysis of how Emmitt’s demise was portrayed and utilized in witness depositions, in post-trial confessions, in newspapers and magazine articles, in numerous books and periodicals, and ultimately in placards and signage intended to commemorate both a young boy’s sacrifice and the birth of the mid twentieth century civil rights movement.
Although Tell has an obvious reverence for Emmett’s memory, he’s not at all delicate in his delivery. This book is not for the faint of heart. The unspeakable atrocities of that summer night in Mississippi are detailed and scrutinized and analyzed from every angle. In these pages young Emmett dies a hundred times—steel yourself or be prepared to step away.
“The Delta was a place where Planters wore suits when they lynched you. They drank illegal whiskey from a clean glass. They delicately wiped their mouths on monogrammed handkerchiefs after they spat on you.” -Yvette Johnson
The Ghosts of Mississippi
It’s best to begin a description of Dave Tell’s Remembering Emmett Till by describing what it is not. It is NOT a biography of the barely fourteen year old Black child who, on the 28th of August, 1955, was kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered by racist degenerates in rural Mississippi. Nor is it a memorial to Emmett’s memory or a frank condemnation of the Jim Crow laws and segregationist class structures that facilitated Emmett’s abduction and lynching. Rather than all that, Tell’s book is a detailed philosophical and legal analysis of how Emmitt’s demise was portrayed and utilized in witness depositions, in post-trial confessions, in newspapers and magazine articles, in numerous books and periodicals, and ultimately in placards and signage intended to commemorate both a young boy’s sacrifice and the birth of the mid twentieth century civil rights movement.
Although Tell has an obvious reverence for Emmett’s memory, he’s not at all delicate in his delivery. This book is not for the faint of heart. The unspeakable atrocities of that summer night in Mississippi are detailed and scrutinized and analyzed from every angle. In these pages young Emmett dies a hundred times—steel yourself or be prepared to step away.