Emmett Till was a 14 year old, African American boy, who was born in Chicago, Illinois.[1] Although he was from the North, he spent the summer with his family in Mississippi in 1955,[2] where racial segregation was still very prevalent in the Southern States. While in Mississippi, a witness stated that “one of the other boys dared Till to talk to the store’s cashier, Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. It was reported that Till then whistled at, touched the hand or waist of, or flirted with the woman as he was leaving the store.”[3] About a week later, the cashier’s husband and half brother kidnapped Emmett Till. They “severely beat the boy, gouging out one of his eyes. They then took him to the banks of the Tallahatchie Rover, where they killed him with a single gunshot to the head.”[4] After this, they tied his body to a fan with barbed wire and thew his body in the river. His face was unrecognizable and his mother, Mamie Till, wanted to have a funeral for him with an open casket, as seen in the photo above.
This image was photographed by David Jackson on September 15, 1955. David Jackson attended the funeral of Emmett Till, and published the historic photo to JET magazine. [5] According to “The Murder of Emmett Till” From the Library of Congress, “JET’s circulation just took off when they ran the picture. They had to reprint, the first time they ever reprinted JET magazine. And there was a lot of interest in that case. And the entire black community was becoming aware of the need to do something about it.”[6] The photo consists of Mamie Till, Emmet Till’s mother, and her fiancé Gene Mobley, looking over the open casket of Emmett Till. Time magazine has named his photo one of the “100 most influential photos of all time.”[7] In the photo, we can see Mamie Till holding a tissue, clearly disappointed and saddened by the brutal death of her son. Gene Mobley protectively holds Mamie, and stares into the camera as this shot is being taken, which contributes to the seriousness of the event. On the bottom right corner is Emmet Till, unrecognizable, with his face severely beaten and swollen. Jackson’s photograph brings awareness to the racial segregation that cost Emmett Till his life. The mother wanted to have an open casket for her son to let people realize the immense discrimination that Black people in America are facing.
Alleen Pace Nilsen’s article, “Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case,” talks about how there are many who had had not learned the story of Emmet Till in present day, but they wish they had, after seeing this David Jackson’s photograph. This article touches upon Chris Crowe’s nonfiction account of Emmet Till’s death, and how it displays his death as “controversial, yet authoritative and convincing.”[8] Emmet Till’s death was considered controversial by many due to the fact that his murderers, Roy Bryant and his half brother JW Milam, were acquitted by an all-white jury. It further highlights the racial injustice that Emmet Till and his family underwent.
Furthermore, in an article called “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till,” by Christine Harold and Kevin DeLuca, they directly analyze the images of Emmett Till and how the images speak a million words, by stating that David Jackson’s images “became a crucial visual vocabulary that articulated the ineffable qualities of American racism in ways words simply could not do.”[9] The article emphasizes that the photograph taken by David Jackson can alone describe the horrors of racism in America in 1955. Rosa Parks had even stated that Emmett Till’s death “ ‘caused many people to participate in the cry for justice and equal rights, including myself.” [10] The photographs of Emmet Till that quickly circulated around the United States opened the eyes of many. Awareness for Emmett Till’s murder was a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement.
David Jackson’s historical source not only shows us the terrible racism endured during the 1900s, but also how many things have not changed in present day. Oprah Winfrey states that “the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 and the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 were the same thing.”[11] Jackson’s photograph brought the attention to millions in 1955 and continue to bring attentions to millions today. When we learn about stories such as Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin, we can use these to try to make a difference in the inequalities that are going on in America.
[1] Michael Ray. “Emmett Till,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emmett-Till, accessed November 5, 2023.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] “The Photo That Changed the Civil Rights Movement.” 2016. TIME. https://time.com/4399793/emmett-till-civil-rights-photography/.
[6] “The Murder of Emmett Till | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections.” n.d. Library of Congress. Accessed November 29, 2023. https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/murder-of-emmett-till/.
[7]Wikimedia Commons, “Emmett Till parents at funeral” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emmett_Till_parents_at_funeral.jpg, accessed November 5, 2023.
[8] Alleen Pace Nilsen. “Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 47, no. 1 (09, 2003): 90-91.
[9] Christine Harold and Kevin Michael DeLuca. “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 263–86. doi:10.1353/rap.2005.0075.
[10] “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.” The Alabama Review 73, no. 3 (July 1, 2020): 287.
[11] Angela Onwuachi-Willig. “Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: The Tragedy of being “Out of Place” from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin.” Iowa Law Review 102, no. 3 (03, 2017): 1113-1185.