Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press
Contributors: Keith A. Beauchamp (Foreword)
Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi; University Press of Mississippi
Published: January 4, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9781934110157
Subjects: Discrimination & Racism; Media Studies; United States - State & Local - South; History / United States; Social Science; Sociology; African Americans; Civil rights; Crimes against; Mississippi; Press coverage; Sumner; Trials (Murder)
Description: "Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press reveal how Mississippi journalists both expressed and shaped public opinion in the aftermath of the 1955 Emmett Till murder. Combing small-circulation weeklies as well as large-circulation dailies, Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy analyze the rhetoric at work as the state attempted to grapple with a brutal, small-town slaying. Initially coverage tended to be sympathetic to Till, but when the case became a clarion call for civil rights and racial justice in Mississippi, journalists reacted." "Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press provides a careful examination of the courtroom testimony given in Sumner, Mississippi, and the trial's conclusion as reported by the state's newspapers. The book closes with an analysis of how Mississippi has attempted to come to terms with its racially troubled past by, in part, memorializing Emmett Till in and around the Delta."--book jacket.