Seventy-one years ago this month, a 14-year-old Black boy named Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi. His body was later recovered from the Tallahatchie River.
The killing on Aug. 28, 1955, was not the literal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, but it became one of its defining catalysts — forcing a nation to confront the horrific reality of racial terror and the injustice embedded in American society.
Much of that awakening stemmed from the courage of Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. Refusing an undertaker’s offer to make her son’s body presentable, she insisted on an open-casket funeral, held at a church on Chicago’s South Side, so America could see what had been done to her child. More than 50,000 people viewed Emmett’s mutilated body, and photographs published by the Black Press — particularly Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender — carried the horror far beyond Mississippi or the Windy City.
The Black Press understood what was at stake: If America could see the evidence of what happened to Emmett Till, perhaps it could no longer look away.
Yet the story of Till’s murder did not end in 1955.
Consider the memorial at Graball Landing, near the Tallahatchie River, where his body is believed to have been recovered. The first marker was stolen and thrown into the river. Replacement markers were repeatedly vandalized, including one riddled with hundreds of bullet holes. Another was shot up just a month after installation. In 2019, a fourth marker was installed — this time protected by bulletproof steel and security cameras.
The fact that a memorial to a murdered 14-year-old Black child requires a bulletproof case is a sobering commentary on how far we still have to go.
And then there is Mississippi today.
Just days ago, Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old Black mother of four, was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home in Jackson. Authorities have not yet determined the cause or manner of her death, and the investigation remains ongoing. Her mother insists her daughter did not take her own life. Given Mississippi’s painful history, the circumstances demand a thorough, transparent investigation — not assumptions, silence or indifference.
The lesson of Emmett Till is not merely to remember. It is to remain vigilant. Seventy-one years later, America must ensure that racial justice is not merely commemorated in museums, memorials, and speeches, but also defended in the present.
Till-Mobley — a mourning, brave and determined mother — told the world to look. We should never stop looking.
