Remembering Emmett Till

Realms of Memory

In August 1955 Emmett Till was abducted from his uncle’s home, tortured, shot, bound by barbed wire to a cotton gin fan and sunk in the Tallahatchie River. The outrage triggered by the photo of the mangled remains of the fourteen-year-old boy’s body in the open cassette at the funeral in Till’s native Chicago rallied many to the cause of the nascent civil rights movement. University of Kansas Professor Dave Tell, author of Remembering Emmett Till, helps us understand the forces that broke the decades long silence in the Mississippi Delta where the murder took place. The built and natural environment of the Delta, Tell argues, has had a profound influence on the memory and legacy of the murder. For my full conversation with Dave Tell, tune into the April 2nd episode of Realms of Memory.