This extraordinary New York Times bestseller reexamines a pivotal event of the civil rights movementâthe 1955 lynching of Emmett Tillââand demands that we do the one vital thing we arenât often enough asked to do with history: learn from itâ (The Atlantic).
* A New York Times Notable Book * A Washington Post Notable Book * Longlisted for the National Book Award * Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award *An NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Book of the Year *
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 âthe Emmett Till generationâ launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle for civil rights into a mass movement. Tillâs lynching became the most notorious hate crime in American history.
But what actually happened to Emmett Tillânot the icon of injustice, but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till âunfolds like a movieâ (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), drawing on a wealth of new evidence, including a shocking admission of Tillâs innocence from the woman in whose name he was killed. âJolting and powerfulâ (The Washington Post), the book âprovides fresh insight into the way race has informed and deformed our democratic institutionsâ (Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author of Carry Me Home) and âcalls us to the cause of justice todayâ (Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP).