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153 Acknowledgments I am grateful that I was first introduced to the Emmett Till lynching, and the print media coverage of the event, in an undergraduate speech communications class taught by Deborah Atwater. I was intrigued by the case, and I always thought I wanted to know more about it. Little did I know that my undergraduate curiosity would lead to this book. This manuscript represents the culmination of years of preliminary research, outlining, drafting , revising, and refining efforts. Each keystroke was made possible by the support of family, friends, colleagues, mentors, foundations, librarians, and archivists who saw fit to lend their expertise to my endeavor. Every triumph in this text is due to the efforts of my support network, and every flaw is my own. Much of the continued research for and the refining of this manuscript was funded by the generous support of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation’s Minority Junior Faculty Grant, Cabrini College’s Faculty Summer Grants, and the 1976 Foundation Faculty Fellows Grants. As part of this funding, I was able to employ undergraduate research assistants , and Ashley Marie Rivera offered so much to my conceptualizing of the print media’s influence on this case. Ashley brought rays of sunshine and excitement to this research at times when I had doubts, and she helped me elucidate the critical roles that black journalists like James Hicks played in the trial coverage. Thank you, Sunshine. Thanks too to Allison Clark, who eagerly took on the unenviable role of the preliminary editing of this manuscript. Allison, yours was a tough job, but you leaped into the fray and forwarded the cause. I wish to thank the phenomenal staff at the University Press of Kentucky, namely, Anne Dean Dotson, Bailey Johnson, and Stephen Wrinn, and the peer reviewers who vetted my manuscript drafts. Over the years, I have been blessed with a host of people who have supported this manuscript from the early stages of research through the 154 Acknowledgments finished work you read today. I must thank my mentors at Temple University —Susan Klepp, Kenneth Kusmer, James Hilty, Herbert Ershkowitz, Richard Immerman, Gregory Urwin, and Petra Goedde—for their instruction during the nascent stages of my research. Wilbert Jenkins, Bettye Collier-Thomas, Bryant Simon, Teshale Tibebu, and Nathaniel Norment guided the development of that research. Concurrently, Patricia Melzer and Joyce Joyce armed me with the tools necessary to deconstruct gender and sexuality. My time with them in the Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate Program was invaluable and has made me a more well-rounded and conscious scholar. And thank you to my Temple crew—Darius Eschevaria , Anthony Q. Hazard, Craig Stutman, Jay Wyatt, Richard Grippaldi, Smadar Shtuhl, Dianna Reinhard, Dianna DiIllio, Uta Kresse-Raina, Ginger Davis, Bob Wintermute, Phil Gibbon, John Devoti, and Laura Szemanski-Steel—for support and commiseration. I also need to acknowledge the fact that Joseph Fitzgerald’s influence is all over this book and beyond. Joe, I have told you this many times before, but your friendship and our talks have kept me sane through this entire process. You continue to recharge my battery each time we talk. You have been a devoted confidant, dedicated colleague, and dear friend. Thank you for reading and commenting on drafts of this work, for coaxing me to strengthen my gender analysis, for the laughs you provide, and for always being willing to bring me back to reality when I get too far afield. Thank you for making me be a better, more conscious me. Numerous archivists and librarians have offered so much of themselves toward the completion of the manuscript. I thank the wonderful people at Temple’s Paley Library and especially Justin Hill, who worked tirelessly ordering microfilm for me through interlibrary loan. Thank you too to the staff at Temple’s Charles L. Blockson Collection for sharing your rich archives. Most recently, the staff at Cabrini College’s Holy Spirit Library, namely, Lawral Wornek and Anne Schwelm, have supported the final stages of research necessary to bring this manuscript to print. They have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Their efforts uncovered skilled contacts at the archives holding the Abbott-Sengstacke Family Papers, the Dorothy Schiff Papers (Susan Malsbury), the C. A. McKnight Papers Special Collections (Marilyn Schuster), the Field Foundation Archives, the American Folklife Center’s Civil Rights History Project (Jennifer Cutting and Kate Stewart), the Hodding II and Betty Werlein Carter Papers (Mattie Abraham), and the Walter Sillers...

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