Timothy B. Tyson is a visiting professor of American Christianity and Souther Culture at Duke and an adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina, among other impressive positions.
Tyson studied the Emmett Till murder and did the last interview with Caroline Bryant, the Mississippi woman whom Emmett supposedly assaulted in some manner.
During Roy Bryant and J.W. Millan's trial, she testified that he had physically touched her and asked her for a date, then “wolf whistled” at her after he left the store, and she went to her car to get a gun. During Tyson's interview she said some of her testimony wasn't true and that the boy didn't deserve what happened to him. The affront may have been as innocuous as putting the money in the palm of her hand, rather than laying the money for his purchase on the counter as most Mississippi blacks knew to do in the presence of a white clerk.
About three-quarters of the way through the book we get Tyson's interpretation of what really happened. Emmett was never castrated, as some rumors claimed, but he was beaten with a .45 for hours by several men, including Roy Bryant's brother-in-law, then shot behind the ear by one of the other men. Again rumors claimed that the boy didn't go down easily. He talked back and goaded his tormentors, but that's rather hard to believe after he'd been repeatedly hit in the head with a heavy hand gun. Then the men tied a cotton gin vent to his neck with barbed wire and threw his body in the river.
The Mississippi Underground, consisting of several NAACP members and several ministers scoured the immediate area for possible witnesses and several agreed to testify, which was a death sentence in the Old South. One had heard Emmett howling from the beating and identified J.W. Millan when he came out of the barn to get a drink of water. Reverend Moses Wright, Emmett's uncle, and Emmett's mother also testified. According to Tyson, the prosecutor did everything he could to convict the two men, and the judge was fair beyond the call of duty, considering where the trial was held. Ten farmers and two businessmen found Bryant and Millan not guilty.
We also learn that, following WWII, businessmen and professionals throughout the South formed a coalition to deal with returning black soldiers who may have been expecting better treatment, considering they were willing to give up their lives fighting for their country. They expected “peckerwoods” like Bryant and Millan to do their dirty work for them. This explains a lot as I've recently read Harper Lee's early draft of TO KILL A MOCKINGWORD, which was released as a separate novel. Atticus Finch is portrayed as one of these professional men.
Towards the end of the book, Tyson makes a connection between the fifties when Emmett was murdered and the 21st Century when white supremacists are “still killing Emmett Till.” He mentions Black Lives Matter and the murder of nine church-going blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed white supremacists. He does mention Michael Brown, but, curiously, he doesn't say at thing about the young boy with the toy gun that looked like the real thing who was summarily shot by a police officer, whom, I believe, got off Scott free. I also expected to hear something about the Freedom Riders and the murder of three of them in the same general area. I guess Tyson didn't want to wander too far astray from the Emmett Till murder. Click here to post or read comments.
Share
Save
Follow Me