35 pages • 1 hour read
The Blood of Emmett Till
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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Warring Regiments of Mississippi”
The immediate context of Till’s murder is informed by the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ends school segregation in 1954. This prompts Judge Thomas Brady of Mississippi to write a pamphlet called “Black Monday,” in which he predicts blacks will become unruly and provoke a violent response in whites. He suggests authoritarian measures may be needed to stop this violence.
In addition to the Brown decision, World War II prepares many black Mississippians to fight for their civil rights. Anzie Moore sees segregation in the army and learns how to fight it. When he returns to America, he becomes a businessman and heads the Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He works with other successful black businessmen like Theodor Howard to form the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, which promotes black economic development. Medgar Evers fights for voting rights for blacks, as Southern blacks are routinely denied the right to vote.
These black leaders organize movements like the boycotts of white gas stations that deny equal services to blacks. Whites begin to recognize that change is coming, and they see that the Democratic Party, which has been the defender of white supremacy, is changing as a result of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to include blacks in his New Deal coalition during the 1930s. The party is breaking in two as it calls for an end to racial oppression on the national level and moves to oppose Southern white racists like Senator Theodor Bilbo, who endorses violence against blacks to prevent them from attaining their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Black Monday”
After the Brown decision equalizes access to public education, this ignites a potent reaction from whites determined to preserve their power over blacks and to prevent the racist status quo from changing. Thomas Brady’s “Black Monday” pamphlet provides the ideology to justify white opposition to civil rights. Blacks, Brady argues, are a lower species; it will take generations for them to evolve to attain the same societal standards as whites. Until that happens, the greatest danger facing whites is racial mixing and miscegenation. Blacks must be prevented from having contact with white women. Brady’s tract becomes an important organizing tool for the Citizens’ Council movement that spreads through Mississippi. Comprised mainly of white businessmen, it uses propaganda, economic boycotting, and outright intimidation to try to prevent the civil rights movement from succeeding. Blacks who take part in NAACP efforts to petition school boards to integrate are greeted with threats of violence and other forms of intimidation. While the councilmembers eschew violence, they nevertheless make it legitimate by defending those who kill blacks.
Chapter 11 Summary: “People We Don’t Need Around Here Any More”
In the background of the Emmett Till murder is the struggle for black voting rights in Mississippi. The state has the highest percentage of blacks in the South but the lowest percentage of registered black voters. Whites use all tactics—from verbal intimidation to physical violence—to prevent blacks from voting. In the town of Belzoni, a black preacher named George Lee attempts to enroll blacks to vote by having them pay the poll tax. He is murdered after being threatened by the local Citizens Council. The district attorney declines to prosecute the murderers, and the federal Department of Justice drops the case despite clear evidence of murder. These acts of evasion create a license for further violence. Gus Courts, a friend of George Lee, is shot for refusing to remove his name from the voting rolls. He flees to Chicago, as do others who experience similar intimidation. Two weeks before the murder of Emmett Till, another black man named Lamar Smith is murdered in front of a crowd before a courthouse that includes the local sheriff—but again, no one is prosecuted. This is the atmosphere that allowed Till’s murderers to believe they could kill a young black man and get away with it.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Fixed Opinions”
The trial of Emmett Till’s murderers begins on September 19, 1955, in the town of Sumner, just two weeks after the murder. Sheriff Henry Strider wants the case to close quickly to ensure the killers go free and no evidence is found to implicate their guilt. Attempts are made to tamper with witnesses and to discourage them from testifying. Fortunately, Judge Curtis Swango is a man of integrity, and everyone praises the way he manages the trial. All of Mississippi has expressed outrage at the killings, but many also are angry that the NAACP portrays the state as a place where the murder of blacks is common. Some even blame the organization for the murder, saying it would never have happened if the NAACP did not make blacks so disrespectful of whites.
A group of female trade unionists journeys to the trial from Louisiana, and one is black. This provokes controversy among the locals in Sumner, who are not used to seeing blacks and whites treating each other as equals. Black journalists also add a new element to the racist local atmosphere by easily mingling with whites in the courtroom. When a jury of 12 white male farmers is selected, the trial’s outcome is clear: acquittal. Some citizens who avoided jury duty tell reporters they did so because they knew the two men were guilty and did not want to be party to letting them go free.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
Emmett Till’s murder was not a unique or idiosyncratic event. It was precipitated by a climate of warfare between an oppressor race and an oppressed race. Blacks had been kept in a subordinate position in the South since the Civil War and the 12-year era of Reconstruction that followed it, but their call for equal rights was gaining traction among whites due to the New Deal, World War II, and Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. The Board of Education, which granted black students equal access to public schools in 1954.
These advances spurred whites to organize to resist change to the racist status quo in Mississippi. Tyson quotes J. W. Milam to illustrate this resistance to racial equality: “Just so long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are going to stay in their place” (77). The more genteel among the whites resorted to economic warfare, and because whites had such enormous economic power, they could easily use it to intimidate blacks. A black businessman could not prosper if a white banker refused to extend him credit, or if a white wholesaler refused to sell him goods. Much worse, however, were the acts of violence perpetrated by poor whites like the men who murdered Emmett Till. They felt no compunction about murdering blacks who disobeyed their orders not to vote or not to petition for equal access to schools because belonged to the oppressor race in an oppressive culture that subjugated blacks and explicitly encouraged violence against them.
However morally or ethically delinquent these people might appear in retrospect, the author stresses that the entire culture was to blame, not just a few bad individuals. Intellectual leaders in Mississippi portrayed blacks in hideously racist terms and disseminated ugly propaganda that provided whites a license to exercise violence against them. One Mississippi legislator asserted, “a few killings would be the best thing for the state” because few choice murders now would “would save a lot of bloodshed later on” (107). Sexual fear-mongering was also common, and it merged easily with threats of violence. That such threats became real should be no surprise, given this racialized atmosphere.
The power of this culture of racism is evident in the trial of Till’s murderers. No one assumed the trial would be fair or just. No one expected a guilty verdict. The jurors were likely considered to be “good” people in the white community, yet the culture they lived in compelled them to protect members of their community from facing justice for murdering a young black boy. No matter how ugly and immoral the crime, the dictates of white cultural preservation prevailed.
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By Timothy B. Tyson
