Sale!

A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till

Amazon.com Price:  $19.27 (as of 16/04/2019 00:59 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

In August 1955, the mutilated body of Emmett Till―a fourteen-year-old black Chicago youth―was once pulled from Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River. Abducted, severely beaten, and in the end thrown into the river with a weight fastened around his neck with barbed wire, Till, an eighth-grader, was once killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The nation was once horrified by Till’s death. When the all-white, all-male jury unexpectedly acquitted the two white defendants, the outcry reached a frenzied pitch―spurring a fury that would prove vital within the mobilization of black resistance to white racism within the Deep South.

In this sensitive inquiry, historian Stephen J. Whitfield probes Till’s death; its ideological roots; the potent myths concerning race, sexuality, and violence; and the incident’s enduring effects on American national life. As he recreates the trial, its participants, and the social structure of the Delta, Whitfield examines how white rural Mississippians in fact tried “two of their very own.” Regardless that they were acquitted, these same defendants were soon being ostracized by their very own neighbors, and within four months of Till’s death, Southern blacks were staging the historic Bernard Law Montgomery bus boycott―the first major battle within the coming war against racial injustice that would result in the passage of civil rights legislation a decade later.


Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Americas » United States » State and Local » A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till

Recent Products