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.
Chapters 1-4 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Nothing That Boy Did”
Emmett Till, an African American adolescent, is murdered by two white men in the town of Money, Mississippi, in 1955. He supposedly made a pass at a young white woman named Carolyn Bryant, who is married to one of the two men, Roy Bryant. Author Timothy Tyson begins with a conversation he has with Carolyn Bryant many years later, when she’s in her eighties. He asks her what happened. She confesses that she lied during the trial. Emmett Till never touched her, yet she reported during the trial that he brazenly spoke of sex to her and also placed his hands on her waist and blocked her way. She tells Tyson “that part is not true” (6). In newspapers, much was made of the trial and of Till’s “attempted rape” (5). The false reporting and lies created an atmosphere of hysteria that ended with the two perpetrators of the crime being acquitted. Tyson argues that Till’s murder ignited the civil rights movement and launched a “national coalition” (2) devoted to ending racism in the American South.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Boots on the Porch”
Tyson tells the story of what happened when the two white men—Roy Bryant and J. W. “Big” Milam—come to get Emmett Till from the house he’s staying in. Till came from Chicago to visit a friend, Reverend Moses Wright. The title of the chapter, “Boots on the Porch,” refers to how the two white men approach the house carrying flashlights and .45-caliber pistols. Reverend Wright tries to slow them down so that Emmett can get away via the back door. But Emmett is hard to wake up, and the two white men find him. They make him come with them out into the night, to a car waiting in the woods. Reverend Wright recalls hearing the men ask someone in the car if they got the right boy, and someone responds, “Yes” (12).
Chapter 3 Summary: “Growing Up Black in Chicago”
In the usual account of the murder, Emmett Till falls afoul of Southern racist mores out of ignorance. He is accustomed to better race relations up North, and he is not aware that young black men are not supposed to flirt with white women of any age. Tyson seeks to discredit this story by describing just how racist Chicago is in the 1940s and 1950s, as Till is growing up. He describes segregation in housing and how whites use terror tactics to dissuade blacks from moving into white neighborhoods. The big difference in the North is that blacks can vote and their votes matter. The black voting bloc ensures Richard Daley is elected mayor, but while Daley publicly professes to support the idea of integration and fair housing access, he privately acts to stymy black efforts to live in white neighborhoods.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Emmett in Chicago and ‘Little Mississippi’”
Tyson tells Emmett’s life story up until his departure for the South in 1955. He starts by describing the world in which Emmett grew up. Argo, Illinois, was known as “Little Mississippi” to its black inhabitants, most of whom had migrated North from Mississippi in the 1920s. Emmett’s mother Mamie marries briefly, gives birth to Emmett in 1940, and divorces two years later. Emmett is a lively young man who loves baseball, comedy, and doo-wop singing. He is also an avid churchgoer who helps with housework when his mother is obliged to return to work at the local corn refining plant. Argo is segregated, and Tyson argues that Emmett would have been familiar with racism from growing up there. The main street divides the black and white neighborhoods, and black children are warned never to cut through the white neighborhood even if late for school.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
America in the first half of the 20th century was characterized by high levels of racism. It affected everything, from where African Americans could live to whether they would be allowed to live if they engaged in certain kinds of behavior considered inappropriate by whites, especially in the South. In these early chapters Tyson positions Chicago, where Emmett Till was from, with Mississippi, where he died. Racism in the North was not as violent compared to the South, but it still existed. In Chicago, for example, racism primarily took the form of housing discrimination. Blacks were obliged to live in crowded ghettos, and if they moved into a white neighborhood, whites quickly left and converted their old houses into apartments to rent. The white landlords did not maintain the homes, and the buildings quickly became tenements.
The situation in the South was more fraught, as blacks were treated with greater hostility and violence. Tyson quotes one black Mississippian who wrote, “I did not understand the restrictive soreness imposed by segregation […] until I got off that train and breathed the freer air of Chicago” (19). Lynching was a common practice, and it often went unreported both nationally and locally. Whites had free rein to harm blacks they disapproved of. Not even children were immune from violent mistreatment by whites. Tyson describes a world of legitimate aspiration on the part of blacks as they moved North, attempting to flee racism in the South and establish better lives for themselves and their children. The great sadness of this story is that Emmett Till was the embodiment of these aspirations for success in life and for the creation of a better world for the next generation of black Americans. His mother worked hard, and Emmett was well on his way to becoming a successful member of society, though he would have contended with racism all his life.
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By Timothy B. Tyson
