The Presumption of Innocence Was Never Ours

The Love of the Lynch Mob

Emmett Till and the American structure of accusation

Emmett Till was fourteen years old when he was abducted from his relatives’ home in Mississippi in August 1955, beaten beyond recognition, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River with a cotton gin fan wired to his body. The precipitating event was an accusation that he had c…