A review by jenikki
The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson

5.0

This one took a while for me to read because it was so gut-wrenching on every page—not just for the horrific things that befell a 14-year-old boy who dared to show his Chicago face in a Mississippi backwoods convenience store, but because Tyson constantly provides statistics and stories of mob mentality that could have been set in 2016 around the last election. If I'd read this book 10 years ago I'd have still read it with horror, appalled that these very things were happening when my parents were children, but now I read it with a new heartbreak: that we've changed very little in the 60 years since Emmett Till was tortured and murdered by a bunch of racist rednecks, who were set free by a jury of Mississippians who bought into the "we're not gonna let those uppity Northerners tell US how to live our lives, no SIR!" This racial and cultural divide, as prominent now as it was in 1955, makes you wonder if America will ever fully be whole. An excellent book.