A FEW DAYS FULL OF TROUBLE

Emmett Till’s cousin chronicles the hopeful reopening of the 1955 Mississippi lynching case based on new evidence.

The horrific 1955 murder of Till in Money, Mississippi, was never solved in court due to the skewed accusation by White woman Carolyn Bryant that the 14-year-old African American visiting her store had menaced her sexually. Her husband and others were acquitted by the all-White jury, and justice never arrived. Till’s family, especially his mother, Mamie, crusaded for justice for decades (she died in 2003), and his murder galvanized the civil rights movement. Parker, an Illinois minister, was outside the store waiting for Emmett, and he knows that Bryant’s version of what happened was a resounding lie. In 2017, a new book by Duke professor Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till, purported that Bryant recanted her accusation with the words, “That part’s not true.” The FBI reopened the case, and the author and other family members were eager to reinterview Bryant and Tyson to figure out what actually happened. However, over the course of four years tracking the evidence, Parker, in conjunction with the FBI, could not corroborate Tyson’s claims about his interviews with Bryant, and the case again closed. Parker’s story, well rendered with the assistance of journalist Benson, is a deeply personal, painful reopening of wounds, revealing deep resentment and frustration with the White appropriation of the Till tragedy. “You can’t understand the Civil Rights Movement without understanding the story of Emmett Till—the way we were, the way we are, the way we need to be in order to move forward into a new experience of shared power,” write the authors. While some readers may be frustrated by the lack of closure and lingering sense of injustice, the book is a useful addition to our understanding of a vital case of racial hatred and violence in the U.S.

Compelling evidence that the fight for racial justice is never truly over.