About this item
This extraordinary New York Times bestseller reexamines a pivotal event of the civil rights movement—the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till—"and demands that we do the one vital thing we aren't often enough asked to do with history: learn from it" (The Atlantic). * A New York Times Notable Book * A Washington Post Notable Book * Longlisted for the National Book Award * Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award *An NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Book of the Year *In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. Only weeks later, Rosa Parks thought about young Emmett as she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Five years later, Black students who called themselves "the Emmett Till generation" launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle for civil rights into a mass movement. Till's lynching became the most notorious hate crime in American history. But what actually happened to Emmett Till—not the icon of injustice, but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till "unfolds like a movie" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), drawing on a wealth of new evidence, including a shocking admission of Till's innocence from the woman in whose name he was killed. "Jolting and powerful" (The Washington Post), the book "provides fresh insight into the way race has informed and deformed our democratic institutions" (Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me Home) and "calls us to the cause of justice today" (Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP).
About the Author
Timothy B. Tyson is author of The Blood of Emmett Till (2017) , which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. "A critical book," writes the Atlantic Monthly, [that] manages to turn the past into prophecy and demands that we do the one vital thing we aren't often enough asked to do with history: learn from it." Tyson is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and also holds a faculty position in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina. His previous book, Blood Done Sign My Name, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction, the Christopher Award, and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power won the James Rawley Prize for best book on race and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for best first book in U.S. History from the Organization of American Historians. Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (1998) , co-edited with David S. Cecelski, won the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award from the Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. Ghosts of 1898: Wilmington's Race Riot and the Rise of White Supremacy won the Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Much of his work has also involved documentary and dramatic adaptations of his books. Playwright and actor Mike Wiley adapted Blood Done sign My Name as a play that premiered in 2008. Screenwriter and director Jeb Stuart turned it into a feature film of the same name, starring Nate Parker, which opened in theaters across the United States in 2010. Radio Free Dixie also provided the basis for a documentary film, "Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power." which PBS broadcast on national television in 2006 and which won the OAH's 2007 Eric Barnouw Prize for best historical film. Tyson serves on the executive boards of the North Carolina NAACP, the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights, and Repairers of the Breach. Since 2007 he has worked alongside many others in the Moral Monday movement and the Poor People's Campaign led by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II. Tyson lives in Durham, North Carolina.
