The Blood of Emmett Till

The book describes a culture of racism in the American South that manifested in beliefs as well as practices. The primary belief, in this case, was that whites were superior to blacks. As a consequence, a series of social rules were cemented in Southern culture which held that blacks were obliged to behave in a deferential and respectful manner toward whites at all times. If they did not abide by these implicit rules, they risked violence of various kinds, from the economic violence of being denied access to bank loans to the physical violence of beatings and lynchings. Emmett Till was kidnapped, beaten, and murdered for violating the unwritten rule that black men were not to touch white women.

In addition to recounting how systemic racism and a culture of white superiority led to Emmett Till’s brutal death, the book also explores the history of racial intolerance in America. Racism has been a facet of American culture since the nation’s founding. Africans were kidnapped and then forcibly shipped across the Atlantic to America, where they worked for whites for no monetary compensation. These slaves where then excluded from the equality enshrined in the US Constitution through initiatives like the Three-Fifths Compromise, racial stratification, the one-drop rule, and segregation. The economic exploitation of black labor intensified in the early 19th century as cotton became a key component of the Industrial Revolution. The Deep South, especially states like Mississippi, where cotton grew more easily, became the center of cotton production, and this production revolved around the huge plantations where thousands of blacks worked tirelessly to enrich their white masters.

This hyper-exploitation of black labor created enormous wealth disparities that led many to demand the federal government to pay reparations to blacks to make up for the wealth they lost. Racism endured throughout the mid-20th century, when the events of this book take place, thanks to a culture of white superiority, discriminatory legislation like Jim Crow, and Supreme Court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson, which maintained that public segregation was constitutional. The great efforts of civil rights activists moved the federal government to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, halting some of these institutionalized racist practices, such as lynching and the denial of voting rights. But even today, there is still much work to be done to dismantle the systemic racism that pervades American culture and politics.