He’d begged his mother to let him take a train south to visit kin. She’d probably warned him anew of the risks. Mamie Till Mobley had lived in Mississippi, and she knew that “Citizens Councils” existed in the South, that they’d use intimidation and violence as tools of enforcement. The Brown v. Board of Education decision had also been released not long before and she must’ve sensed that the South was bubbling, when Till stepped into a grocery store in Money, Miss.
He was there, they claimed, less than a minute…
As Tyson says, we may never know exactly what happened on that day in 1955. Some key people are dead, some have memories muddied by time or threats—but with those facts in mind, there’s still no denying that “The Blood of Emmett Till,” contains historical TNT.
Donham’s confession aside (as if that’s not reason enough to read this book), Tyson does a fine job of recounting what happened to Till, and afterward.
(“The Blood of Emmett Till” by Timothy B. Tyson, c.2017, Simon & Schuster, $27/$36, Canada, 304 pages.)
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