A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till
by Stephen J. Whitfield
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen J. WhitfieldEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-11-01
ISBN: 080184326X
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Book Reviews of A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till
Book Review: Good but not great
Summary: 4 Stars
I haven't read this book since May of 1991 but the book was very helpful to me at the time. In 1991 there were not a lot of books on this subject and I was making a trip to Money, Mississippi.
Although I enjoyed the book, there were a few things that I troubled me. I believe Mr. Whitfield wrote towards the end of this book that Roy Bryant had an unlisted phone number because he was afraid somebody would try to avenge Emmett Till's murder and come to his Ruleville house in order to exact revenge. If my memory is correct (and this was almost 18 years ago), Roy Bryant lived in Ruleville, Mississippi. In mid May 1991, I called directory assistance and they gave me Roy Bryant's phone number and address. A week later, I drove from Chicago to Mississippi. After visiting Money and several of the other places that are mentioned in books about Emmett Till, my wife and I drove to Mr. Bryant's Ruleville neighborhood and got the name of a nearby street. We then drove past Roy Bryant's house and he was outside in his driveway in black pants and a white shirt (his clothes looked pretty much the same as the ones he was wearing in the 1955 photos of him). After driving past his house, I turned my car around and drove back to Mr. Bryant's house. I stopped my car about 15 yards away from Roy Bryant. I pretended that I was lost and I called out to him. I wanted to see him up close to make sure he was the same Roy Bryant who had murdered Emmett Till. He approached our car and I asked him how to get to some street (which I knew was located close to his street). He looked exactly like he did in the photos from Life Magazine (just older). He had aged but it was definitely him. He leaned down to talk to me and his face was less than a foot from my wife's face. I thanked him for the directions and we drove away. Of course there were things I was dying to ask him, but I was fairly certain he wouldn't answer my questions and I also wasn't willing to let my curiosity and search for truth put my wife's life in danger. From about a distance of 80 yards from Mr. Bryant's house, I took a photo of him and we drove off. I took the photo only because I wanted to prove to author Stephen Whitfield that what he wrote in his book "A Death in the Delta" was inaccurate and that Mr. Bryant could easily be found. Authors have a responsibility to write accurate information and I was disappointed by this obvious error. Mr.Whitfield lost a lot of credibility with me. I never sent Mr. Whitfield the photo but I did call him when I returned from Mississippi and I told him what I did and what I found out. I found Stephen Whitfield to be an extremely nice man and he wasn't at all defensive about what I had discovered. I enjoyed his well-researched book in spite of the one obvious innacuracy regarding Roy Bryant. Mr. Whitfield told me that his own wife would never be willing to make the trip to Money, Mississippi and he was amazed that my wife was willing to go there during precious vacation time. I was disappointed that Stephen Whitfield never travelled to Money, Mississippi before writing his book. I never understood how one could write a book on Emmett Till without going to Money, Mississippi. It's like writing a book on the New York Yankees without having ever been to Yankee Stadium or New York. I've been to Money, Mississippi twice. The first time (May of 1991), it was in the evening and the people at the gas station next to Bryant's grocery store were giving my wife and I really dirty looks. They knew why we were there and they resented us for being there. The second time (May 1996)I was there with my wife and my daughter (who was just a few weeks shy of her third birthday). The three of us met a local man at the Money, Mississippi post office who said he had been a juror on the Till case when he was young man. He was a very nice man as well, and I just couldn't understand how he could have allowed Roy Bryant and Big Milam to go unpunished. Bryant's grocery store had deteriorated significantly in the five years since I had last been there. I've always tried to find the exact location of the tar paper shack from which a confused Emmett Till was taken in the middle of the night in late August of 1955. The shack was destroyed years ago but I wanted to know where it once stood. I hope someday I can go back and somebody can show me where it once stood.
One reviewer criticized Mr. Whitfield for laying the blame of this tragedy solely on the shoulders of Big Milam, Roy Bryant and Emmett Till's cousin. I don't believe that Mr. Whitfield did lay the blame solely on them. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe he just wrote that Carolyn Bryant didn't want her husband to find out what had happened. There are things about the Emmett Till tragedy that we will never know. We will never know for sure what Emmett Till did and said in Bryant's grocery store in late August of 1955. We can only guess. We also will never know for sure what role Carolyn Bryant played in Till's death. I do find it very plausible that Carolyn Bryant tried to keep her husband from knowing what had happened. Just as a heterosexual man might be embarrassed today about a gay man "hitting" on him, Carolyn Bryant would have been embarrassed to have people find out what had happened that evening in 1955. She also probably knew that her husband was a loose cannon and that if he found out, he would do something horrible which in turn would give added life to the story (that she wanted to go away). Most of the blame for Till's death should go to the two half-brothers and anybody else who participated in Till's murder. Some of the blame must go to anybody who incited or informed Roy Bryant about the incident. But you could easily make a case that President Eisenhower (a good man) and our entire society were also to blame for Emmett Till's tragic death.
Summary of A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till
In August 1955, the mutilated body of Emmett Till?a fourteen-year-old black Chicago youth?was pulled from Mississippi's Tallahatchie River. Abducted, severely beaten, and finally thrown into the river with a weight fastened around his neck with barbed wire, Till, an eighth-grader, was killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The nation was horrified by Till's death. When the all-white, all-male jury hastily acquitted the two white defendants, the outcry reached a frenzied pitch?spurring a fury that would prove critical in the mobilization of black resistance to white racism in the Deep South.
In this sensitive inquiry, historian Stephen J. Whitfield probes Till's death; its ideological roots; the potent myths concerning race, sexuality, and violence; and the incident's enduring effects on American national life. As he recreates the trial, its participants, and the social structure of the Delta, Whitfield examines how white rural Mississippians actually tried "two of their own." Though they were acquitted, these same defendants were soon being ostracized by their own neighbors, and within four months of Till's death, Southern blacks were staging the historic Montgomery bus boycott?the first major battle in the coming war against racial injustice that would lead to the passage of civil rights legislation a decade later.
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