A poignant reminder of a painful past: Emmett Till’s death shocked the nation’s conscience in 1955
The original glass-topped casket that held the battered body of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955, will be given to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The donation was announced prior to a memorial service at the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, the site of Till’s 1955 funeral, on Friday, Aug. 28, the 54th anniversary of Till’s death.
Photo: (Click on thumbnail for fullsize image) Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till Mobley.
The front page of the Chicago Defender expresses the outrage felt at Till's murder.
A young boy from Chicago, Till was killed by white men during a visit to his great-uncle Moses Wright’s house in Money, Miss. While the precise details of Till’s actions remain unclear, he was perceived to have offended a white woman, and thus crossed the racial boundaries of 1955 Mississippi. He was abducted and tortured and his body thrown into a river, where it was later discovered by fishermen. His mother, Mamie Till Mobley, had her son laid out in the glass-topped casket so the world could see “what they did to my boy.”
He was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery in suburban Chicago. The body was exhumed for an autopsy in 2005 during another criminal investigation into his murder, and Till was reburied in another coffin.
The glass-topped coffin was found in poor condition in a storage shed on the cemetery grounds during a police search last month, following the arrest of cemetery employees accused of digging up more than 300 graves and reselling the plots. Till’s plot was undisturbed.
Till’s murder and the images of his battered body, first published in Jet magazine and carried around the world by the news media, are considered by historians to be the beginning of the civil rights movement in America.
“We are both honored and humbled that the Till family has entrusted this sacred object to the museum for preservation and safekeeping,” museum Director Lonnie Bunch said. “The death of Emmett Till shocked the conscience of the world and fueled the civil rights movement. It is our duty to ensure that this iconic artifact is preserved so that we will never forget. ”
Simeon Wright, 66, who was with his cousin Till on the night of the murder, led the family’s efforts to donate the casket. “If we didn’t have this casket, no one would ever believe this could happen in America,” Wright said. “Some people would say this is just a wooden box, scuffed up on the outside and stained on the inside. But this very particular box tells a story, lots of stories. And by sending it to the Smithsonian’s African American museum we—Emmett’s few remaining relatives—are doing what we can to make sure those stories get told long after we’re gone.”
The original glass-topped casket of lynching victim Emmett Till was found in a shack at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill. (Associated Press photo)
The casket will be transported by truck to Washington, D.C. Its condition will be assessed by conservation staff at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute.
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Posted: 3 September 2009
