The Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries present the Annual Schewe Lecture:
Tim Tyson, Author of The Blood of Emmett Till
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium
5:00 P.M.
Author Reception and Book Signing
University Club
6:00 P.M.
In 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy from Chicago named Emmett Till, while visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta, violated racial taboos in a harmless exchange with a young white storekeeper, Carolyn Bryant. Three nights later, several of her kinsmen and family friends tortured the boy to death and threw his battered body in the river. Part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till (2017) is an explosive reconstruction of the lynching and trial, and their crucial impact on our history. Award-winning author and former UW-Madison history faculty member Timothy Tyson writes profoundly and cinematically to update and redefine a history that still confounds us today in the age of Black Lives Matter.