It has always been said that truth will ultimately prevail. This three part book represents that truism. Part One presents the untainted facts surrounding the story of Emmett Till's brutal lynching and the establishment of that incident as the true catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. Unearthing and establishing Till as catalyst found its beginnings over thirty years later, in the 1988 Ford Doctoral Dissertation, "Emmett Till: The Impetus of the Modern Civil Rights Movement," by this author at the University of Iowa. It speaks the truth about the seminal role of the innocent fourteen-year-old northern youth whose brief visit to Mississippi, the metaphor for American racism, rendered him the status of martyr for victims of centuries of abject racial oppression. Part Two presents the raison d'etre for the book, as it confronts and exposes the abominable acts of plagiarism by several people whose obvious goal is to acquire fame and fortune for themselves. Part Three highlights the continuing commitment to the struggle on the part of the author via demonstrating the Till Continuum, represented by modern day examples of Black victimization.The plight of Black farmers, who are losing 9,000 acres of land per week, and land owners in general, such as "Smokin' Joe" Frazier who lost 140 acres of prime property in Bucks County, PA valued at 100 million dollars, are supreme paradigms of this reality.
Thus, the injustices of robbing Black people and their future generations of their land legacy and the theft of the intellectual property of one who is dedicated to truth in its totality are the key elements in this book. Scholars, attorneys, celebrities, and many others have offered testimonies here, thereby rendering their dedication to bringing a halt once and for all to such pervasive injustices.
Clenora Hudson-Weems, Professor of English (UMC), received BA degree?LeMoyne College; MA degree?Atlanta U.; Ph.D. degree?U. of Iowa; Certificate of French Studies?L?Universit? de Dijon. She is the author of The Definitive Emmett Till: Passion and Battle of a Woman for Truth and Intellectual Justice, 2006; Africana Womanist Literary Theory, 2004; Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, 1993; and co-author, with Wilfred D Samuels, of Toni Morrison, 1990. She has chapters/articles in Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition, 1997; Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies and A Historical and Bibliographical Guide to the African American Experience, 2000; State of the Race: Creating Our 21st Century, 2004; and Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power, 1998. She edited Contemporary Africana Theory and Thought: A Guide to Africana Studies (In Press) and was the guest editor for a special issue on ?Africana Womanism? for The Western Journal of Black Studies (fall 2001). In 1994, Kay Bonetti with The American Audio Prose Library, interviewed her on Emmett Till and Africana Womanism. Her current work is Emmett: Passion of a Black Woman, a feature-length movie script, with producer Barry Morrow, Oscar-winning co-writer for Rain Man. Her novel, Soul Mates, is forthcoming; latest passion is the plight of Black farmers and our land owners.