By AP
The cousin of Emmett Till, a black teen whose 1955 lynching in Mississippi helped trigger the modern civil rights movement, says a new book helps clear his cousin’s reputation.
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From the publisher:
“In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. Only weeks later, Rosa Parks thought about young Emmett as she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Five years later, Black students who called themselves ‘the Emmett Till generation’ launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle for civil rights into a mass movement. Till’s lynching became the most notorious hate crime in American history.
“But what actually happened to Emmett Till – not the icon of injustice, but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till ‘unfolds like a movie’ (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), drawing on a wealth of new evidence, including a shocking admission of Till’s innocence from the woman in whose name he was killed.”
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See also:
Author Timothy Tyson at a U.S. National Archives event.
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Plus:
* The New York Times: Emmett Till’s Murder: What Really Happened That Day In The Store?
* The Atlantic: How The Blood of Emmett Till Still Stains America Today.
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Previously:
Emmett Till’s Father Was Hung.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on June 13, 2017