Titles
Simeon's Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till
Simeon Wright (with Herb Boyd)
Lawrence Hill Books / Chicago Review Press
January 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55652-783-8
No modern tragedy has had a greater impact on race relations in America than the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. A 14-year-old black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, in 1855, Till was taken from his uncle's home before dawn by two white men. Several days later his body, battered beyond recognition, was found in the Tallahatchie River. This grotesque crime became the catalyst for the civil rights movement.
It has been more than a half century since the killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were tried and acquitted of the murder, then confessed to it. But there is one eyewitness who has not yet fully told his story. At age 12, Simeon Wright saw and heard his cousin Emmett whistle at Carolyn Bryant at a grocery store; he was sleeping in the same bed with him when Emmett was taken away; and he was at the sensational trial.
Simeon's Story tells what it was like to grow up in Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s; paints a vivid portrait of Moses Wright, Simeon's father, a preacher who bravely testified against the killers; explains exactly what happened during Emmett's visit to Mississippi, clearing up a number of common misperceptions; and shows how the Wright family lived in fear after the trial and endured the years afterward. Simeon's Story is the gripping coming-of-age memoir of a man who was deeply hurt by the horror of his cousin's murder but, through prayer and hope, has come to believe that now it's time to tell it like it was.
Author Bios
Simeon Wright was born in 1942. A major figure in the documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, he has been profiled in the Washington Post and has appeared on Tavis Smiley and Court TV. Herb Boyd has published 18 books, including We Shall Overcome: The History of the Civil Rights Movement as it Happened and Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin. He is managing editor of The Black World Today.
"It is my hope that [Simeon's Story] renews our efforts to deal with the nation's lingering inequities, particularly the hundreds of unsolved murder cases from the civil rights era."