The Fifties

by David Halberstam

Mississippi was a poor state, perennially either forty-seventh or forty-eighth in the union in education and per capita income (“Thank God for Mississippi,” officiais in Alabama and Arkansas allegedly claimed after the results of every census were published), and Tallahatchie, a county that was half Delta and half hill country, was one of the poorest areas in the state. Four fifths of its inhabitants earned under two thousand dollars a year. The educational levels were the third worst in the state. The average white adult had completed only 5.7 years of school, and the average black only 3.9. The largest town was Charleston, one of its two capitals, which had 2,629 people. Emmett Till was rather short but already possessed the body of a man and weighed 160 pounds. It was said by some who knew him that he was a sharp dresser and perhaps a little cocky. Neither of these qualities seemed criminal back in Chicago, but in Money, Mississippi, they were the kind of things that could easily get a young black in trouble.