The Blood of Emmett Till

Starred review from October 24, 2016
With rare immediacy, Tyson (Blood Done Sign My Name) revisits the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi and the acquittal of those responsible in a gripping account of the cultural milieu of a racist environment. The work is informed by the retrospective of Carolyn Bryant (the woman whose short interaction with Till set the ensuing developments in motion), supported by the recollections of many who witnessed, participated in, testified to, and reported about the crime at the time, and strengthened by Tyson’s diligent research through contemporaneous accounts and archival materials as well as recent scholarship. Two families—the victim’s and the killers’—and their extended kinships occupy the center of the narrative, as Tyson describes the enmeshment of their lives with the legal apparatus that included several sheriffs, the prosecution and defense teams, the judge, and the jury (“all men, all white”). He also removes a multitude of other involved people from obscurity and gives them dimension. Tyson’s remarkable achievement is that each thread is explored in detail, backstories as well as main events, while he maintains a page-turning readability for what might seem a familiar tale. Cinematically engaging, harrowing, and poignant, Tyson’s monumental work illuminates Emmett Till’s murder and serves as a powerful reminder that certain stories in history merit frequent retelling.

April 3, 2017
Reader Price has a deep, alluring voice reminiscent of old radio announcers. He brings an authentic-sounding Southern accent to the reading of historian Tyson’s latest books,which revisits the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and the legacy of his tragic death in the civil rights movement. But Price has been given the near-impossible task of creating unique voices for innumerable figures: both men and women, old and young, black and white, Southern and Northern. Sometimes these voice characterizations fit smoothly into the narrative, but some distract the listener. (He even tries some unconvincing accents for the few foreigners quoted in the book: German, Czech, French, Italian, Dutch.) Still, his reading thrusts listeners into the horror of 14-year-old Emmett Till’s murder, the trial of his murderers, the wisdom and strength of his mother’s actions, and the role of Till’s death in the ensuing civil rights struggles. A Simon & Schuster hardcover.