The lynching of Emmett Till: a documentary narrative

Introduction: The Shifting Grounds of History and Memory

1. Discovery and Indictment

Two White Men Charged with Kidnaping Negro / Delta Democrat-Times

Parents and Relatives Keep Silent in Case of Boy Charged with Ugly Remarks to Storekeeper[']s Wife / Jackson Advocate

Muddy River Gives Up Body of Brutally Slain Negro Boy / Memphis Commercial Appeal

Designed to Inflame / Jackson Daily News

Mississippi Notebook: Our State a Target for Hate Campaign / Tom Ethridge

Lynch-Murder Aids Enemies of the South / Atlanta Constitution

Blood on Their Hands / Chicago Defender

End the Racist Conspiracy! / Daily Worker

Meddling in Local Case Creates Problems / Greenwood Morning Star

Mother's Tears Greet Son Who Died a Martyr / Mattie Smith Colin

Mother Waits in Vain for Her "Bo" / Mattie Smith Colin and Robert Elliott

50,000 Mourn at Bier of Lynched Negro Child / Carl Hirsch

"Were Never into Meanness" Says Accused Men's Mother / Memphis Commercial Appeal

Charleston Sheriff Says Body in River Wasn't Young Till / Memphis Commercial Appeal

Grand Jury Gets Case: Troops Posted in Delta as Mob Violence Feared in Aftermath to Slaying / Jackson Daily News

Lynching Post-Facto / Delta Democrat-Times

Bad News for NAACP / Jackson Daily News

Mississippi Notebook: Our People Have Behaved Mighty Well / Tom Ethridge

2. Trial

Jury Selection Reveals Death Demand Unlikely / John Herbers

Jim Crow Press at Till Trial / L. Alex Wilson

Wives Serious, Children Romp as Trial Begins / James Gunter

Baby Sitter / Murray Kempton

Lynched Boy's Mother Sees Jurymen Picked / Rob F. Hall

Jokes, Threats Are Blended at Tension-Packed Sumner / James Gunter

Grandstand Play Again / Jackson Daily News

Roman Circus / Jackson Daily News

Judge Swango Is Good Promoter for South / Harry Marsh

Heart of Darkness / Murray Kempton

He Went All the Way / Murray Kempton

Uncle of Till's Identifies Pair of Men Who Abducted Chicago Negro / Sam Johnson

Slain Boy's Uncle Identifies Bryant, Milam on Stand / Ralph Hutto

Mother, "Surprise Witness" Give Dramatic Testimony: Mamie Bradley Says Corpse Was That of Her Slain Son [part 2] / Ralph Hutto

Mother, "Surprise Witness" Give Dramatic Testimony: Mamie Bradley Says Corpse Was That of Her Slain Son [part 1] / Ralph Hutto

Mother Insulted on Witness Stand / Washington Afro-American

Future / Murray Kempton

Youth Puts Milam in Till Death Barn / James L. Hicks

Judge Sends Jury Out of Courtroom during Testimony of Defendant Roy Bryant's Wife / Jackson State Times

Mrs. Bryant Tells How Northern Negro Grabbed Her, "Wolf-Whistled" in Store / Jackson Daily News

Woman in Lynching Case Weaves Fantastic Story / Washington Afro-American

Sheriff Strider's Testimony Raises Doubt Body in River Was Till Youth / Jackson Daily News

Jury Hears Defense and Prosecution Arguments as Testimony Ends in Kidnap-Slaying Case / Sam Johnson

Called Lynch-Murder, "Morally, Legally" Wrong / Cleveland Call and Post

Defendants Receive Handshakes, Kisses / James L. Kilgallen

2 Face Trial as "Whistle" Kidnapers - Due to Post Bond and Go Home / Murray Kempton

Mississippi Jungle Law Frees Slayers of Child / James L. Hicks

3. Post-Trial Reactions and Assessments

Fair Trial Was Credit to Mississippi / Greenwood Morning Star

Acquittal / Delta Democrat-Times

Verdict at Sumner / Jackson Daily News

Letter to the Editor / Chester Himes

Shame of Our Nation / Daily Worker

State of Mississippi Still Carries the Burden / Atlanta Constitution

Justice in Sumner / Dan Wakefield

Langston Hughes Wonders Why No Lynching Probe / Langston Hughes

Till Case Verdict / Jackson Advocate

What You Can Do about the Disgrace in Sumner / Chicago Defender

Careful, Last Look / Jackson Daily News

Double Murder in Mississippi / Christian Century

Southern Style / Roi Ottley

Press Release, Office of the Honorable Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. / Adam Clayton Powell

I Think the Till Jury Will Have Uneasy Conscience / Eleanor Roosevelt

Whose Circus? / Delta Democrat-Times

Memo from the American Jewish Committee on European Reaction to the Till Case, 7 October 1955

Selected Letters to the Editor: From the Washington Afro-American

Selected Letters to the Editor: From the Baltimore Afro-American

Selected Letters to the Editor: From the Cleveland Call and Post

Selected Letters to the Editor: From the Memphis Commercial Appeal

Selected Letters to the Editor: From the Atlanta Constitution

4. Searching for the Truth

James L. Hicks's "Inside Story" of the Emmet Till Trial (series from Cleveland Call and Post)

Sheriff Kept Key Witness Hid in Jail During Trial

White Reporters Doublecrossed Probers Seeking Lost Witnesses

Mississippi Lynching Story: Luring Terrorized Witnesses from the Plantations Was Toughest Job

Jimmy Hicks Tells Inside Story of Infamous Mississippi Lynch Case

Defender Tracks Down Mystery Till "Witnesses" / L. Alex Wilson

Here Is What "Too Tight" Said / Chicago Defender

Open Letter To U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover / James L. Hicks

Emmett Till Is Alive / The American Anti-Communist Militia

Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi / William Bradford Huie

What's Happened to the Emmett Till Killers? / William Bradford Huie

From Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the Full Story of Emmett Till / Olive Arnold Adams

5. Memoirs

From "Mamie Bradley's Untold Story" / Mamie Till Bradley and Ethel Payne

From Wolf Whistle and Other Stories / William Bradford Huie

From For Us, the Living / Medgar Evers

From Coming of Age in Mississippi / Anne Moody

From Soul On Ice / Eldridge Cleaver

From The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC / Cleveland Sellers and Robert Terrell

From My Soul's is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered / Ruby Hurley and Howell Raines

From "On Being Black and Middle Class" / Shelby Steele

Remembering Emmett Till / Michael Eric Dyson

Growing Up White in the South: An Essay / Lewis Nordan

From Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black / Gregory Howard Williams

From Profiles in Black Courage / Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Killing of Black Boys / John Edgar Wideman

6. Literary Explorations

Requiem for a Fourteen-Year-Old / Richard Davidson

Mississippi - 1955 / Langston Hughes

Money, Mississippi, Blues / Langston Hughes and Jobe Huntley

Cause for Justice / Richard Davidson

For Emmett Till / Mary Parks

Blood on Mississippi / Ernest Wakefield Stevens

Mississippi / Martha Millet

Tribute to Emmett Till / Mary Carson Cooper

For Moses Wright (Uncle of Emmett Louis Till) / I. S.

Promotional Flyer for "A Good Place to Raise a Boy" / Wade Dente

Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi, Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon / Gwendolyn Brooks

Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till / Gwendolyn Brooks

Death of Emmett Till / Bob Dylan

Note for Blues / James Baldwin

Till / Julius E. Thompson

Afterimages / Audre Lorde

Emmett Till / Wanda Coleman

From 1935: A Memoir / Sam Cornish

Emmett Till and the Men Who Killed Him / June Akers Seese

Lovesong of Emmett Till / Anthony Walton

Emmett Till / Bryan Johnson

Can I Write of Flowers? / Jeanne Miller.