35 pages • 1 hour read
Timothy B. TysonThe Blood of Emmett Till
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 17-Epilogue Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “Protest Politics”
The Emmett Till’s murder and trial inspires a “righteous revolt” (191) among black Americans. For many months after the trial, protests are held around the country to raise money for the NAACP. The money helps support such new actions as the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. Blacks in Alabama decide they are tired of having to give up seats to whites, so they stop using the public buses, thus depriving the city of needed revenue. Till’s mother works tirelessly, traveling across the country and giving speeches with other leaders of the nascent civil rights movement. Many criticize President Eisenhower for failing to use federal power to intervene or enforce civil rights. Meanwhile, antilynching laws are routinely defeated by Southern politicians. The North’s moral power is also diminished by the continuing violence against blacks in cities like Chicago, where black Americans are denied fair access to housing. Soon after the Till trial, a Look magazine reporter pays Milam and Bryant to give their account of the murder, and they confess to the crime. They claim they did not initially intend to kill Till. It was only when Till taunted them with stories of having sex with white girls that they decided to kill him. Milam says he would not tolerate a black person who did not submit to whites. Till made the mistake of saying he was not afraid of Bryant and Milam.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Killing Emmett Till”
The author recounts the facts of Till’s murder. Apparently, Milam and Bryant were not initially intent on murder; instead, they wanted to teach Till a lesson. They were drunk and drove around looking for a cliff where they could pretend to throw Till in the river to scare him, but they got lost and could not find the place. Instead, they took him to one of Milam’s barns, but they beat him so badly that the idea of taking him to a hospital and dropping him at the door would not work, as Till was too far gone. Another man—Melvin Campbell—shot Till in the head. The blame for the murder, the author argues, lies not entirely with these men. Blame must also be assigned to President Eisenhower, who ignored the violence in the South, and his attorney general Herbert Brownell, who refused to intervene in cases of explicit denial of rights and overt murder. Such inaction created a climate in which people like Milam and Bryant felt they had a license to kill blacks. No one would object, and no one would hold them accountable. The author contends that the racial caste system in America is ultimately to blame.
Epilogue Summary: “The Children of Emmett Till”
The title of the Epilogue, “The Children of Emmett Till,” refers to those who were inspired by Till’s death and sought to change America by ending racism and creating equality between the races. Initially, Till’s death inspired many young Southern blacks to be more militant in their efforts to end the South’s racial caste system. Rosa Parks, for example, refused to move seats on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, just four days after the Emmett Till murder trial ended. Her act of defiance launched a movement for change; Parks said she was thinking of Till as she made her decision.
Similarly, young members of the Southern Non-Violent Coordinating Committee like Charles McDew said they finally knew who they were as black people when they saw photos of Till’s body. McDew and others would lead the sit-in movement starting in 1960, when students at a North Carolina university refused to leave a segregated lunch counter. Till also lives on in the Black Lives Matter movement of the 21st century. The author argues that it’s important to remember victims like Till, as doing so helps confront continuing racism in America.
Chapter 17-Epilogue Analysis
The author argues that Till’s murder and the subsequent trial were an “Archimedean lever” (191) that started the slow toppling of the structure of white supremacy in the South. The account of the murder is horrific, and one is reminded that some humans are capable of great inhumanity toward others. This is especially the case in 1950s Mississippi, where long-standing racist assumptions about white superiority were allowed to persist without criticism and reform. The only good outcome of Emmett Till’s murder was that it initiated such a movement. Indeed, Tyson wrote the book to force America to confront this horrifying and shameful chapter of its history because, as he writes, “we cannot transcend our past without confronting” (203).
The author describes how, in 2016, two white senators from Mississippi joined Attorney General Eric Holder, the first black man to hold that office, in planting a tree on the nation’s capital to honor and memorialize Till. Despite all the progress made toward racial justice and equality, Tyson asserts that “America is still killing Emmett Till” (214). This is apparent in the racial violence that still erupts, like the 2014 shooting that killed nine black citizens attending a prayer meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. It is also evident in the fact that young blacks are incarcerated at a much higher rate than whites, and they are given much higher sentences for similar crimes. There is still much work to be done to achieve equal justice in the United States, and change will only come when we confront the history of racism and racial violence in our country. In his conclusion Tyson writes, “all of us must develop the moral vision and political will to crush white supremacy—both the political program and the concealed assumptions” (217).
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By Timothy B. Tyson
