Remembering Emmett Till / Dave Tell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tell, Dave, 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Till, Emmett, 1941-1955--Anniversaries, etc.

Till, Emmett.

Till, Emmett, 1941-1955--Anniversaries, etc--Economic aspects.

Murder victims--Monuments--Mississippi--Delta (Region)--History.

Murder victims.

Murder victims--Monuments--Mississippi--Tallahatchie County--History.

Civil rights movements--United States--History.

Civil rights movements.

Delta (Miss. : Region)--Social conditions.

Delta (Miss. : Region).

Tallahatchie County (Miss.)--Social conditions.

Tallahatchie County (Miss.).

Delta (Miss. : Region)--Race relations.

Tallahatchie County (Miss.)--Race relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 308 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Illinois ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Summary:

Take a drive through the Mississippi Delta today and you'll find a landscape dotted with memorials to major figures and events from the civil rights movement. Perhaps the most chilling are those devoted to the murder of Emmett Till, a tragedy of hate and injustice that became a beacon in the fight for racial equality. The ways this event is remembered have been fraught from the beginning, revealing currents of controversy, patronage, and racism lurking just behind the placid facades of historical markers. In Remembering Emmett Till, Dave Tell gives us five accounts of the commemoration of this infamous crime. In a development no one could have foreseen, Till's murder - one of the darkest moments in the region's history - has become an economic driver for the Delta. Historical tourism has transformed seemingly innocuous places like bridges, boat landings, gas stations, and riverbeds into sites of racial politics, reminders of the still-unsettled question of how best to remember the victim of this heinous crime. Tell builds an insightful and persuasive case for how these memorials have altered the Delta's physical and cultural landscape, drawing potent connections between the dawn of the civil rights era and our own moment of renewed fire for racial justice.

Contents:

Introduction: remembering Emmett Till

Race, geography, and the erasure of Sunflower County

Of race and rivers: topography and memory in Tallahatchie County

Emmett Till, Tallahatchie County, and the birthplace of the movement

Ruins and restoration in money

Memory and misery in Glendora

Conclusion: vandalism and memory at Graball landing.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-226-55970-X

OCLC:

1097184134