BLACK PRESS COVERAGE OF THE EMMETT TILL LYNCHING AS A CATALYST TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by MICHAEL OBY Under the Direction of Leonard Teel ABSTRACT The movement for civil rights in America gathered momentum throughout the 1950s. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling, declaring unconstitutional permissive or mandatory school segregation, the white South responded with both passive and active resistance. In the midst of this ferment, an African-American boy from Chicago was lynched in Mississippi. Subsequent stories in the black press reported not only Emmett Till’s murder and the trial, but also a widening mobilization within the race, notably the creation of associations in defense of civil rights. The coverage of news and views in the black press provide substantial evidence that this mobilization ignited the civil rights movement of the mid-1950s, just months before the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr. This research supports the view that the black community’s mobilization during the months after Till’s murder served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

This paper examines the racially segregationist practices and the integrationist, inclusionist formation of African American leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard during his tenure as a surgeon and entrepreneur in the all-black Mississippi Delta community of Mound Bayou, 1942-1956. The paper analytically investigates the careful racial negotiations that were required of Howard as he advanced a separatist but egalitarian economic and social plan for Delta blacks. This separatist plan, it is argued, is grounded in the racial pragmatism of the Seventh-day Adventist church which provided a bibliocentric, Tuskegee-inspired education to Howard from youth through medical school and beyond. Howard’s adherence to Adventist racial codes provided him with unique tools to establish financial strength and social cachet whereby he could in time shift to a more inclusionist, desegregationist focus. Howard’s separatist racial pragmatism is demonstrated in his creation of an economic power base in the 1940s. The 1950s shift to an inclusive position appears principally in three developments in Howard’s Mound Bayou career: the founding of the Regional Council for Negro Leadership, his activism after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and his involvement in the trial of Emmett Till’s killers. Evidence is given from a number of primary sources, including both regional and national newspapers and the collected papers of Mississippi House Speaker Walter Sillers. The thesis argues that Howard’s pragmatism was both informed by Adventist racial pragmatism and provided the base whereby he could challenge Jim Crow directly; the pattern is accepting and enhancing racial segregation for the purpose of developing the means to work toward a racially inclusive, integrationist ideal. This pattern appears in Adventist evangelist practice, and it appears, with striking resemblance, in Howard’s work in Mound Bayou.

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Emmett Till’s murder inspired many novelists, poets, and artists. Recently, Till has inspired several feminist young adult novelists who are introducing his case in an intersectional way to a new generation of readers. The works that I have studied are A Wreath for Emmett Till (2003) by Marilyn Nelson, The Hunger Games Trilogy (2008-2010) by Suzanne Collins, and Midnight without a Moon (2017) by Linda Jackson. By examining how the authors employ a feminist perspective, readers can understand how they are striving for a more inclusive, intersectional feminist movement. This is significant because the publishing industry, specifically for Young Adult Literature, is not diverse. These works, while often overlooked by critics, may be the first exposure most young readers have to Emmett Till. Each of these novels could be used to teach readers not only about Till’s case, but also about current events to help foster a multicultural consciousness.

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