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 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Pistol Whipping at Christmas”
The South is a caste society at the time Emmett Till is murdered. Blacks are on the bottom and are referred to as the “mudsill” (44); just above them are poor whites like Roy and Carolyn Bryant. Whites in this social position survive by selling things or working for others. They have little status. Carolyn’s family is somewhat better off. Her father works as a manager on a plantation and as a prison guard, but when he dies, her family’s income disappears and their status grows more precarious. Carolyn’s mother becomes a nurse and moves from the country to Indianola, Mississippi. Carolyn recalls that she could play with black children at home, where black servants were common, but she was forbidden from being seen in public with them. In high school, she is quite attractive and is soon married to an older boy. They quickly have two children and open a store to make a living. The Milam/Bryant family into which she marries is lower class, according to Carolyn. They drink liquor all the time, are given to violent arguments, are explicitly racist, and carry handguns. Roy Bryant’s half-brother J. W. “Big” Milam rules the family. He is mean and overbearing. Described as someone who liked “to kill folks” (49), he is one of the murderers of Emmett Till.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Incident”
On August 24, 1955, Emmett Till and some of the children from the Lewis family with whom he was staying go to the Bryants’ store. The other children tell Emmett to go inside to see the beautiful white woman who works there. Till goes in with another boy, who leaves before Emmett. Emmett is inside for another minute, and something happens that offends Carolyn Bryant. She claims he took hold of her hand and asked for a date. One of the children on the porch, Ruthie May Crawford, says she saw through the window that Emmett placed the money for his purchase directly in Carolyn’s hand instead of placing it on the counter for her to pick up. This is a violation of the unofficial rule that blacks could not touch whites. When Emmett comes out of the store, Carolyn follows and goes to her car to get a pistol. Emmett whistles at her, and the other children are shocked as they realize that Emmett has broken an even more serious social taboo. Black men were not to express admiration for or sexual interest in white women. The children drive home quickly, full of fear.
Chapter 7 Summary: “On the Third Day”
After the two white men take Till from the home where he’s staying, the Lewises seek help from white neighbors, who refuse. Moses Wright goes to tell the sheriff, Crosby Smith, who immediately starts to search for the body along riverbanks—the traditional dumping site for lynching victims. The sheriff then arrests Roy Bryant, who claims that he and Big Milam only talked to Emmett and then let him go free.
On Wednesday, August 31, Emmett’s body is found, and it is in terrible condition. His face was destroyed, and part of his head was cut away with an axe. A sheriff from an adjacent county, Henry Strider, takes over the investigation. He is a friend of the Milams, who committed the murder, and he orders that Emmett’s body be immediately buried. The author believes that Strider knew the sight of the body would inspire public anger and that Strider wanted to conceal the violence inflicted on Emmett Till. By now Till’s mother Mamie is aware of what happened, and she insists the body be returned to Chicago for burial.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Mama Made the Earth Tremble”
After she hears news of her son’s death, Mamie Till decides she will not allow his murder to go unnoticed. She contacts the media and summons the help of friends like Rayfield Mooty, a labor union official. When the train bringing Till’s coffin to Chicago arrives, she insists that it be taken to a funeral home so the body can be placed on view to the public. In the days that follow, tens of thousands of people view Till’s mutilated body.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
The author describes Southern society in a way that allows readers to understand how such a horrible murder could have occurred. The Milams were a violent and racist family whose economic position is precarious. They felt an additional sense of status by flaunting their supposed superiority over blacks, who were the only demographic in their community that was lower on the socioeconomic ladder than them. It’s clear that Big Milam was a bully who liked to hurt people. When characterizing his client, Milam’s own defense attorney admitted, “He likes to kill folks” (49).
The repressive society of the South maintained the hierarchy of whites over blacks through unwritten rules or customs that all honored and obeyed. Behind such customs was the threat of violence for rule-breakers. Tyson quotes black author Richard Wright, who explains, “The things that influenced my conduct as a negro did not have to happen to me directly […] Indeed, the white brutality that I had not seen was a more effective control of my behavior than that which I knew” (26).
Till broke one of these implicit rules without realizing it. His behavior at the store clearly indicates he had no idea how dangerous it was for a young black man to approach a young white woman in anything but the most deferential and respectful of ways. That his very small infraction resulted in such horrific violence suggests how wrong such racialist assumptions were. He was the victim of not just murder but also incredibly sadistic behavior. The only fortunate thing to emerge from the event was Mamie Till’s decision to use her son’s death to draw attention to the evils of racism and mobilize a movement to end racial oppression in the South. Her decision to “let the people see what they did to [her] boy” (71) was an incredibly brave act by a mother determined not to let her son die in vain.
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By Timothy B. Tyson
