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Emmett Till

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Barn where Emmett Till was killed

His Name Was Emmett Till

In 1955, just past daybreak, a Chevrolet truck pulled up to an unmarked building. A 14-year-old child was in the back.

The Unfinished Story of Emmett Till’s Final Journey

Till was murdered 65 years ago. Sites of commemoration across the Mississippi Delta still struggle with what’s history and what’s hearsay.
Installation of new historical marker by Emmet Till Memorial Commission at Graball Landing, October 2019.

Bulletproofing American History

Mabel Wilson discusses the history of racial violence and the continued vandalism and destruction of Black historical memorials in the Deep South.

Emmett Till Memory Project

The website version of an app designed to be a digital guide to the legacy of Till’s murder.

Remembering Emmett Till

The ruins of a country store suggest that locals have neglected the memory of Emmett Till’s murder.

People Keep Shooting Up The Sign Commemorating Emmett Till’s Murder

It has been a target of vandals ever since it was dedicated.

The Justice Department Is Reinvestigating the 1955 Slaying of Emmett Till

His brutal killing shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement.
Left, a young Emmett Till. Right, Carolyn Bryant with her two young sons at Till's murder trial, 1955.

How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case

The woman whose testimony was central to the infamous case admits feeling 'tender sorrow.'
Emmett Till's photo is seen on his grave marker in 2002.

Journalist Withheld Information About Emmett Till’s Murder, Documents Show

William Bradford Huie’s newly released research notes show he suspected more than two men tortured and killed Emmett Till, but suggest that he left it out.
A racist political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as an educator teaching racialized colonial subjects in areas recently conquered by the U.S. during the War of 1898, the year of the white supremacist coup and massacre in Wilmington, N.C. and the mass disenfranchisement of Black Americans by the Supreme Court.

Heather Cox Richardson Shows the Importance of Holding Right-Wing Criminals and Frauds Accountable

Richardson’s work is as much about the contradictions of our shared past as it is an urgent call to action around the current authoritarian crisis.
Members of Jayland Walker's family stand beside a sign in tribute to him.
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Jayland Walker’s Killing Didn’t Spur Expected Protests. Here’s Why.

An effective media strategy has often been crucial to rallying the public behind Black victims of fatal violence.
Shot full of bullet holes, a sign marking where police recovered the body of Emmett Till.
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Excluding Black Americans From Our History Has Proved Deadly

Why it's so important to remember even our ugliest and most racist chapters.
Headshot of William Faulkner

‘A Land Where the Dead Past Walks’

Faulkner’s chroniclers have to reconcile the novelist’s often repellent political positions with the extraordinary meditations on race, violence, and cruelty in his fiction.

How Poverty Is Reshaping the Story of Emmett Till's Murder

Beset by poverty, Glendora, Mississippi clings desperately to a version of Till's story that few others seem to believe.
Rod Serling at the typewriter, at his Westport, Connecticut, home in 1956.

An Early Run-In With Censors Led Rod Serling to 'The Twilight Zone'

His failed attempts to bring the Emmett Till tragedy to television forced him to get creative.

Simeon Booker, Intrepid Chronicler of Civil Rights Struggle for Jet and Ebony, Dies at 99

He risked his life to expose Emmett Till’s death and the Freedom Rides to a national audience.
W.E.B. Du Bois.

Racial Violence in Black and White

From lynching photos to Black Lives Matter – what does it mean to look at images of African Americans being murdered?
Annie Mae Edwards and her children—Helen, Barbara, Johnnie Ruth, and Gene, with an unidentified woman.

A Forgotten Eyewitness to Civil-Rights-Era Mississippi

As resistance to integration mounted, Florence Mars bought a camera and began to photograph many subjects, including the trial of the killers of Emmett Till.
An inaccurate Spanish map from the 1500s of the southeast of the United States.

To Understand Mississippi, I Went to Spain

The forces that would shape my home state’s violent history were set in motion by a 480-year-old map made by a Spanish explorer.
FBI agents and local police examine a bombed out pickup truck in Natchez, Mississippi.

The History of Violent Opposition to Black Political Participation

Leaders in the 20th-century South faced violence and death for promoting voting rights; systemic failure enabled their killers to go unpunished.