Mississippi
Mississippi barn where Emmett Till was killed to open as memorial site
Emmett Till’s cousin on Till’s kidnapping
Emmett Till’s cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker, was in the family’s home when Till was kidnapped in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Aug. 28, 1955.
Sarah Warnock, Mississippi Clarion Ledger
The Mississippi Delta barn where 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally beaten and killed will be open to the public as a “sacred” memorial site by 2030, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center announced.
The barn, located in a rural area outside the city of Drew, was purchased Nov. 18. The Emmett Till Interpretive Center announced the purchase Sunday, Nov. 23 — the birthday of Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
The acquisition was aided by a $1.5 million donation from television producer and writer Shonda Rhimes.
The center will reportedly have the barn under 24-hour surveillance, and the property will be equipped with floodlights and security cameras for precautionary measures.
The center plans to open the barn as a memorial by the 75th anniversary of Till’s lynching.
“(The barn) will be preserved not merely as a structure, but as sacred ground — a place where truth can live without fear of being forgotten,” the center wrote in news release. “We did not save this place to dwell in grief. We saved it so that truth could keep shaping us.”
What happened to Emmett Till
Till was 14 when he traveled from his hometown of Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives in 1955. Till was accused of flirting or whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working at a grocery store in rural Mississippi. In the overnight hours of Aug. 28, 1955, Till was taken from his uncle’s home at gunpoint and beaten by two vengeful white men, one of whom was the husband of Bryant.
Three days later, a fisherman on the Tallahatchie River discovered the teenager’s bloated and disfigured corpse. Till’s mother, Mamie, demanded that her son’s mutilated remains be taken back to Chicago for a public, open casket funeral that was attended by tens of thousands of people.
Graphic images taken of Till’s remains, sanctioned by his mother, were published by Jet magazine. Since then, Till’s name has become synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement and how the United States has dealt with race relations.
Till’s mother was a civil rights activist in the aftermath of her son’s death and died in 2003.
“To walk through the barn’s doors, one might think of Emmett’s voice calling for his mother in the dark — and of Mamie, hundreds of miles away in Chicago, transforming that cry into a call the world could hear. Her decision to open her son’s casket was not an act of despair but of fierce faith — faith that seeing would lead to understanding, and understanding to change,” the center said.
“That faith still calls to us. The barn carries her same charge: to help the world see.”
Pam Dankins is the breaking news reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Have a tip? Email her at pdankins@gannett.com.