There’s still plenty to say about the Emmett Till story

This family handout photograph taken in Chicago, date unknown, shows Mamie Till Mobley and her son, Emmett Till, whose lynching in 1955 became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. (AP)

In 2010, I started researching a book on the Emmett Till murder.  I often had to explain to people that Till was a 14-year-old African American youth from Chicago who, while visiting kin in the Mississippi Delta in 1955, was lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman.  To be more precise, white Americans needed reminding about Till, not Black ones.

My book came out at the end of 2018, around the same time as a few other books on Till.  And that turned out to be part of a larger flood of remembrance.