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gold_star_reader's review
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Torture, Police brutality, and Kidnapping
Minor: Confinement
amris's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Hate crime, Racism, Violence, Grief, and Murder
jaydionne's review against another edition
5.0
The Till story that you get from school and the elders is just the very tip of the iceberg. So many pieces of the puzzle that I didn’t know. Good read.
plannedbibliophile's review against another edition
3.0
I truly learned a lot about the Emmett Till case however, I found myself getting bored with some parts of this book. Some parts I just couldn't follow making this book hard to get through.
booyakki's review against another edition
5.0
A vital part of any attempt to understand the Civil Rights period of American history.
lesserjoke's review against another edition
3.0
An informative account of the famous 1950s lynching case, including a rare interview with the white woman who accused the black fourteen-year-old of whistling at her and new details from a recovered courtroom transcript of the subsequent trial of his murderers. The facts surrounding Emmett Till's death are uncomfortable to read and depressingly familiar, from the extrajudicial killing itself to the difficulty of holding the perpetrators accountable even in the face of overwhelming evidence. As we continue to see in similar incidents today, the flimsiest of excuses are seized upon both to justify executing the victim in the first place and then to avoid punishing his killers.
I do think this would be a stronger text if (white) author Timothy B. Tyson had brought a wider scope to the discussion, emphasizing more of the historical forces of bigotry and institutional inequality that led to the crime and their continuity through our own era. Although the epilogue contains some belated gestures in that direction, the modern parallels are largely left as an exercise for the reader; for the most part this 2017 book feels uninformed by the earned insights of the Black Lives Matter movement and paternalistically positioned as a dispassionate record of distant events.
It also ends on the appealing but inaccurate claim that a tired Rosa Parks was thinking of Emmett when she refused to give up her seat and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when in actuality she was a dedicated civil rights activist who had carefully planned the organized action with her confederates. Outrage over the Till affair may have played a role in this and other cries for justice, but Tyson's framing erases black agency and raises questions as to the veracity of his reporting throughout.
[Content warning for graphic violence / torture and racist slurs.]
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I do think this would be a stronger text if (white) author Timothy B. Tyson had brought a wider scope to the discussion, emphasizing more of the historical forces of bigotry and institutional inequality that led to the crime and their continuity through our own era. Although the epilogue contains some belated gestures in that direction, the modern parallels are largely left as an exercise for the reader; for the most part this 2017 book feels uninformed by the earned insights of the Black Lives Matter movement and paternalistically positioned as a dispassionate record of distant events.
It also ends on the appealing but inaccurate claim that a tired Rosa Parks was thinking of Emmett when she refused to give up her seat and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when in actuality she was a dedicated civil rights activist who had carefully planned the organized action with her confederates. Outrage over the Till affair may have played a role in this and other cries for justice, but Tyson's framing erases black agency and raises questions as to the veracity of his reporting throughout.
[Content warning for graphic violence / torture and racist slurs.]
--Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!--
Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter
amjammi's review against another edition
4.0
Comprehensive, with a lot of details about national context.
loribuhring's review against another edition
5.0
Very well written and really dives into what actually happened to Emmett and what transpired after his murder.