Nearly 60 years ago, Emmett Till was kidnapped, brutally beaten and left to drown in Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River. The all-male, all-white jury acquitted the men who later confessed to the murder, saying Till deserved what he got after making sexual advances and whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a young white storekeeper and wife of one of the murderers. Her testimony described Till grabbing her waist and uttering obscenities, but is there any truth to that? Historian Timothy Tyson is the only one who has spoken with Bryant on record in an interview he conducted nine years ago. In his new book, The Blood of Emmett Till, she reveals that “that part’s not true.” Tyson sits down with Soledad O’Brien to discuss his meeting with Bryant and why she wanted to set the record straight.
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