On May 3, 2023, Davis Houck presented “’A Lynching Post-facto’: Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press in 1955” as part of the History Is Lunch program.
Houck employed never-before-used historical materials while working on his book Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press, co-authored with Matthew A. Grindy, to reveal how Mississippi journalists expressed public opinion and also shaped it in the aftermath of the murder of Emmett Till.
Examining small-circulation weeklies as well as larger daily newspapers, the authors found that early coverage tended to be sympathetic to Till. But when the case became a clarion call for civil rights and racial justice in Mississippi, journalists reacted.
“This project started with a fairly simple question: what did Mississippians learn about Emmett Till and his kidnapping and murder from the very beginning?” said Houck. “The white Mississippi press coverage was influenced by racial dynamics in and out of the state. Whether it was stories written by locals, by wire services, letters to the editor, or photographs, these documents tell an interesting and unpredictable story.”
Davis W. Houck is Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies and founder of the Emmett Till Archive at Florida State University. He earned his BA in speech communication from the College of Wooster, his MA in rhetoric and communication from the University of California, Davis, and his PhD in speech communication from Penn State University. Houck is author of Black Bodies in the River: Searching for Freedom Summer, published in 2022 by University Press of Mississippi, and co-author of Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press and coeditor of Women and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965 and The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It Is.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
