About Me
Hello, my
name is Devery Anderson. I want to personally thank you for your
interest in the Emmett Till case, and for taking the time to look over
this website.
I first became acquainted with Emmett Till in the fall of
1994, as a student at the University of Utah, after watching the first
segment of the PBS documentary series on the Civil Rights Movement,
Eyes on the Prize. Emmett’s murder and the subsequent acquittal of
his killers left me sad, angry, and full of questions. What happened to
the killers after their acquittal? What happened to Emmett’s mother? Was
she alive, or had she died somewhere in obscurity? Why was I not already
familiar with this case?
Several months later I discovered that there was at least one
book on the subject in print, and so I purchased Stephen Whitfield’s
A Death in the Delta. As fate would have it, Clenora Hudson-Weems,
professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia, came to
speak at the University of Utah in May 1995. Although her lecture was on
another topic, the school newspaper noted that she was the author of the
book, Emmett Till: Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Right’s Movement.
I attended her lecture, purchased her book and was full of questions. I
read both of these books and wanted to learn more. These two books were
written at a time when research, writing, and interest in the Till case
was in its infancy, and I eventually came to learn that they contained
several errors (in the case of Whitfield) and/or were very basic or
superficial (as in the case of Hudson-Weems), but they wet my appetite
for more.
I found that this case was consuming me in ways I could not
quite explain. In 1996, while still a student at the University of Utah,
I took a class on racism. Students were given a major assignment, due at
the end of the quarter that we would each present to the class. I
decided that I would put together a scrapbook on the Emmett Till murder
and try to include an original interview with Mamie Till-Mobley,
Emmett’s mother. Luckily, I found her listed in the Chicago telephone
directory and wrote her a letter. After later calling her, we arranged a
time for a telephone interview. Although she thought she could only
spare 45 minutes, we talked for over two hours. That conversation on
December 3, 1996 was the first of dozens that we held over the next six
years. Our last conversation was a month before her January 2003 death.
When she died, I felt like I had lost a family member. I had certainly
lost one of the most amazing, compassionate, and courageous people I had
ever known.
This website is one way for me to contribute to the spread of
knowledge about the Emmett Till murder. I will update it regularly as I
continue to do research and gather information. In addition to managing
this site, I am researching and writing my own book on Emmett Till,
which I believe will be the definitive work on the subject. It is
tentatively titled, The Boy Who Never Died: The Saga of the Emmett
Till Murder, and promises to painstakingly researched, based on
hundreds of hours of archival research, and interviews with those who
were witnessed the case unfold, including Emmett Till’s family members
who were with him in Mississippi. It will bring the case up to the
present.
Besides my work on the Emmett Till case, I am a writer and
researcher of other areas of American social and religious history. I
have published several articles and am co-editor of two books on Mormon
history that were released in August 2005, which together, won the award
for Best Documentary at the annual meeting of the Mormon History
Association in Casper, Wyoming in May, 2006 . I currently live in Salt
Lake City, Utah, and am the father of three children, Amanda, Tyler, and
Jordan. I have a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of
Utah.
Please send any suggestions for improving the design and use of this
website to:
devery@emmetttillmurder.com
Photo by Emily Hatch
Destined for obscurity
Until you took a south-bound train.
But soon we saw your battered face,
And we felt your mother’s pain.
Because bad men, with
their hearts of stone,
Who delight in dirty deeds,
Unknowingly fulfilled the word
That it’s a little child that leads.
And “black”
meant “brave” those summer days,
Enduring threats and fear.
But the Tallahatchie’s deeper now
Because it holds our tears.
Tried, acquitted, they
walked the streets
They bragged, then lived in shame.
Living life disowned, alone,
In prisons without names.
Making sense of senseless
acts
Decades later, now we see.
Despite the walls now broken down,
We’re just beginning to be free
An only child, a mother’s
son,
You moved a sleeping land.
And as one of heaven’s angels,
You’ve moved us once again.
Devery Scott Anderson
(c) 2004