Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement (Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series) Paperback – August 29, 2017 by Devery S. Anderson (Author), Julian Bond (Foreword) (University Press of Mississippi)

I have read many books on the Emmett Till lynching-murder and this one is by far the best. It is well written, extensively researched, and sensitively impartial. Mr. Anderson does not sugarcoat things. 

Unfortunately, Emmett Till, who was a mere child and not schooled in the nuances of race relations in the South as his cousins were, thought he could joke around and get a laugh out of his young relatives by wolf whistling at Carolyn Bryant. Little did he know that this act, the behavior of a child, would lead to his brutal death and become one of the founding stones of the Civil Rights Movement the way no other death of a Negro, as we were then called, at the hands of racist Southern Whites hell-bent on preserving their way of life, did. I grew up and still reside in the South, and race relations are better but not by much. There are today pockets of my home state where minorities simply are not welcome and are made to feel uncomfortable when they go there. Still, it is difficult for me to fathom how one group of people could treat another so badly for dozens of years, and how grown men could beat, torture, and shoot to death a juvenile just because he was 'Negro' and stepped out of line with a White woman. I first learned of Emmett Till from a book on the Civil Rights Movement many years ago, when I was a teenager myself, and the shock I felt when I read about his lynching death was so powerful that it never completely left my mind. I am sorry to say that I don't feel at ease even now with Southern Whites due to Till's murder, among others - not to mention that I happen to live in an area that is very redneck though I'm sure many people here would claim that they are not 'that way'. Mamie Till-Mobley's memoir was excellent too, but she kept insisting that her son whistled to get his words out as a result of the stutter he had after suffering from a bout of polio. Even his cousin Simeon Wright admitted that it was a 'wolf whistle'. 

At any rate, Mr. Anderson's book is the definitive one on the Till case and cleared up some confusion for me, such as the verdict not being an all out acquittal as others had written, there were 2 hold outs but they were not for convicting Milam and Bryant (of course), and also Juanita Milam's true feelings towards her sister-in-law (I always assumed that they were close). It was interesting to learn what had happened to those associated with the case, including the attorneys; I was quite sad for the prosecution team dying so young, though the defense I could care less about (I truly believed that Breland was a die-hard racist). Till's death has become a legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and this book tells the incredibly tragic story in a manner that is informative yet compassionate. How anyone could give this book 1 star is beyond me but everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion.