美国国家公共电台 NPR A Brutal Lynching And A Possible Confession, Decades Later

A Brutal¹ Lynching And A Possible Confession², Decades Later

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

A young man named Emmett Till was lynched in August of 1955 in the small town of Money, Miss. He was 14 years old, an African-American boy from Chicago who was visiting his relatives. The case is decades old, but a recent book has spurred the Department of Justice to reopen another investigation³. NPR's Wade⁴ Goodwyn reports.

WADE GOODWYN, BYLINE⁵: Duke professor Tim Tyson has written two civil rights history books that have brought national acclaim⁶, but as the 59-year-old trundles around his large vegetable garden next to his house in Durham, N.C., Tyson still seems very much the small-town, country boy.

TIM TYSON: Well, you know, the squirrels have it coming. They ate over half of my crop last year, and I'm afraid the Lord called some of them home this year. I buried them in the garden. (Laughter). I thought it poetic⁷ justice.

GOODWYN: Tyson's first book, "Blood Done Sign My Name" is a searing memoir⁸ of racial murder in his hometown of Oxford⁹, N.C., in 1970. His father, a Methodist minister, sided with the town's black community and was excoriated¹⁰ as a traitor¹¹ to the white race. Tyson's life and worldview were never the same. A few weeks after publication, the author got a phone call. A fan was on the other end raving¹² about how much her mother-in-law loved his memoir and how she wanted to meet him.

TYSON: You know, I sort of pretended she hadn't said it and thanked her very much and was getting off the phone. And then she said, you might know about my mother-in-law. Her name was Carolyn Bryant.

GOODWYN: Indeed, Tyson did. Carolyn Bryant had been at the center of one of the country's most notorious racial murders, the lynching of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta¹³.

TYSON: I went to her house. I walked in the door. She gave me a big hug. She served me poundcake and coffee. And she seemed like pretty much any kind of Methodist church lady I've ever known in my life.

GOODWYN: But in 1955, Carolyn Bryant was a striking 21-year-old who'd married into a rough and violent working-class family. She and her husband, Roy, owned a small rural grocery store that catered¹⁴ to local sharecroppers. On August 24, Carolyn was behind the counter when Emmett Till walked in with some friends to buy bubble gum. Tyson says what happened next remains¹⁵ a matter of dispute.

TYSON: We do know a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago visiting his relatives in Mississippi had some kind of harmless encounter with a white woman, and her kinsmen¹⁶ came in the middle of the night, snatched him away from his family at 2:30 in the morning - drunk men with guns - dragged him off, tortured him to death in a tool equipment shed in unspeakable ways and threw his dead body in the river.

GOODWYN: Authorities charged Carolyn Bryant's husband and her brother-in-law with Till's murder. In Bryant's statement to her lawyer, Carolyn described Till as sassy and disrespectful, that when he left the store he turned around and said, bye, baby. But back in Till's hometown of Chicago, his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, held an open casket funeral for her son. Jet magazine was there and published a big story along with a devastating¹⁷ photo of the badly mutilated child lying in repose¹⁸.

African-Americans across the country were horrified¹⁹ and infuriated by what they saw. The powerful NAACP and the Brotherhood²⁰ of Sleeping Car Porters took up the case. The angry and organized reaction across the nation reverberated²¹ back to Mississippi. So when Carolyn Bryant took the stand to testify in her husband's murder trial, her story had changed from what she told her lawyer.

TYSON: She essentially²² told the age-old story of the black-beast rapist. And it was a well-worn story that Southerners, black and white, have heard for a long time.

GOODWYN: Bryant's story evolved. On the stand, she claimed the boy manhandled her and bragged²³ he'd had sex with white women before. The all-white jury took about an hour to find the defendants²⁴ not guilty. Five decades later, Carolyn Bryant, now Carolyn Bryant Donham, told the Southern author she admired so much that what she testified to on the stand that day was a lie.

TYSON: She started muttering, well, they're all dead now, anyway. She said of the attack - of the assault, of the sexual part - she said that part's not true.

GOODWYN: Carolyn Bryant eventually moved from Mississippi to North Carolina, where she lives with her daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant. In an interview with NPR, Bryant denied her mother-in-law had recanted to Tyson, saying what she said on the stand is what she said all along. She didn't change her story.

JIM COLEMAN: You would have thought that some of these things would have been put to bed.

GOODWYN: Jim Coleman is a law professor at Duke University. Coleman says the Justice Department reopened the Till case once before, back in 2004, but a Mississippi grand jury declined to take any further legal action. After this latest Till book was published, the FBI quietly reopened the case, asking for and receiving Tyson's notes and research this summer. Coleman is curious about the Justice Department's motives²⁵.

COLEMAN: I don't see anything that would be accomplished²⁶ by a federal reopening of the case other than the publicity²⁷ of the Justice Department having to reopen the case.

GOODWYN: The Justice Department declined to comment to NPR about this latest investigation. The year after Till was murdered, Bryant's husband and brother-in-law admitted in a magazine article that they indeed had murdered the child but claimed the boy deserved it. The case did more than shame the nation. It motivated to action an entire generation of black organizers.

CHARLES COBB: I can remember even now standing²⁸ on street corner looking at that photograph with my friends of his body.

GOODWYN: In 1955, Charles Cobb was the same age as Emmett Till, 14 years old. By 1962, Cobb left Howard University where he was a student and headed for the Mississippi Delta and became an organizer for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating²⁹ Committee.

COBB: Those of us who made our way into the civil rights movement in the 1960s call ourselves the Emmett Till generation.

GOODWYN: The men who murdered an African-American child from Chicago in order to further terrorize the local black community believe they had served the cause of white supremacy³⁰ well, but in fact, they'd done anything but. Though it would take another decade, Tyson says the seeds of the Voting Rights Act were actually planted in Mississippi in 1955 in the blood of Emmett Till. Wade Goodwyn, NPR News

[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this story, both online and in the audio, we incorrectly say Blood Done Sign My Name was Tim Tyson's first book.]

(SOUNDBITE OF YPPAH'S "NEVER MESS WITH SUNDAY")

1 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

2 confession   

n.自白，供认，承认

参考例句：

• Her confession was simply tantamount to a casual explanation.她的自白简直等于一篇即席说明。
• The police used torture to extort a confession from him.警察对他用刑逼供。

3 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

4 wade   

v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉

参考例句：

• We had to wade through the river to the opposite bank.我们只好涉水过河到对岸。
• We cannot but wade across the river.我们只好趟水过去。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 acclaim   

v.向…欢呼，公认；n.欢呼，喝彩，称赞

参考例句：

• He was welcomed with great acclaim.他受到十分热烈的欢迎。
• His achievements earned him the acclaim of the scientific community.他的成就赢得了科学界的赞誉。

7 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

8 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

9 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

10 excoriated   

v.擦伤( excoriate的过去式和过去分词 )；擦破（皮肤）；剥（皮）；严厉指责

参考例句：

• His palms were excoriated by the hard labor of shoveling. 他的手掌因干挖土的活儿而磨破了皮。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His palms were excoriated by the hard labour of shoveling. 他的手掌因挖土之苦工而破皮了。 来自辞典例句

11 traitor   

n.叛徒，卖国贼

参考例句：

• The traitor was finally found out and put in prison.那个卖国贼终于被人发现并被监禁了起来。
• He was sold out by a traitor and arrested.他被叛徒出卖而被捕了。

12 raving   

adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地

参考例句：

• The man's a raving lunatic. 那个男子是个语无伦次的疯子。
• When I told her I'd crashed her car, she went stark raving bonkers. 我告诉她我把她的车撞坏了时，她暴跳如雷。

13 delta   

n.（流的）角洲

参考例句：

• He has been to the delta of the Nile.他曾去过尼罗河三角洲。
• The Nile divides at its mouth and forms a delta.尼罗河在河口分岔，形成了一个三角洲。

14 catered   

提供饮食及服务( cater的过去式和过去分词 )； 满足需要，适合

参考例句：

• We catered for forty but only twenty came. 我们准备了40客饭菜，但只来了20个人。
• They catered for everyone regardless of social rank. 他们为所有人服务而不计较其社会地位。

15 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

16 kinsmen   

n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Kinsmen are less kind than friends. 投亲不如访友。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• One deeply grateful is better than kinsmen or firends. 受恩深处胜亲朋。 来自英汉 - 翻译样例 - 文学

17 devastating   

adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的

参考例句：

• It is the most devastating storm in 20 years.这是20年来破坏性最大的风暴。
• Affairs do have a devastating effect on marriages.婚外情确实会对婚姻造成毁灭性的影响。

18 repose   

v.(使)休息；n.安息

参考例句：

• Don't disturb her repose.不要打扰她休息。
• Her mouth seemed always to be smiling,even in repose.她的嘴角似乎总是挂着微笑，即使在睡眠时也是这样。

19 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

20 brotherhood   

n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊

参考例句：

• They broke up the brotherhood.他们断绝了兄弟关系。
• They live and work together in complete equality and brotherhood.他们完全平等和兄弟般地在一起生活和工作。

21 reverberated   

回响，回荡( reverberate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射

参考例句：

• Her voice reverberated around the hall. 她的声音在大厅里回荡。
• The roar of guns reverberated in the valley. 炮声响彻山谷。

22 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

23 bragged   

v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He bragged to his friends about the crime. 他向朋友炫耀他的罪行。
• Mary bragged that she could run faster than Jack. 玛丽夸口说她比杰克跑得快。 来自《简明英汉词典》

24 defendants   

被告( defendant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The courts heard that the six defendants had been coerced into making a confession. 法官审判时发现6位被告人曾被迫承认罪行。
• As in courts, the defendants are represented by legal counsel. 与法院相同，被告有辩护律师作为代表。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件

25 motives   

n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• to impeach sb's motives 怀疑某人的动机
• His motives are unclear. 他的用意不明。

26 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

27 publicity   

n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告

参考例句：

• The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
• He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事，只当它是一种宣传手法。

28 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

29 coordinating   

v.使协调，使调和( coordinate的现在分词 )；协调；协同；成为同等

参考例句：

• He abolished the Operations Coordinating Board and the Planning Board. 他废除了行动协调委员会和计划委员会。 来自辞典例句
• He's coordinating the wedding, and then we're not going to invite him? 他是来协调婚礼的，难道我们不去请他？ 来自电影对白

30 supremacy   

n.至上；至高权力

参考例句：

• No one could challenge her supremacy in gymnastics.她是最优秀的体操运动员，无人能胜过她。
• Theoretically,she holds supremacy as the head of the state.从理论上说，她作为国家的最高元首拥有至高无上的权力。