Photography museum hosts Emmett Till exhibit

Emmett Till’s brutal murder in 1955 Mississippi shocked the American public in part due to the power of photography.

The 14-year-old was abducted, tortured and shot by two White men, his body weighted and dumped into the Tallahatchie River. When his bloated corpse was pulled out three days later, his mother, Mamie Till, insisted his body be returned to her and that she see him.

Then she insisted on an open casket for his funeral in Chicago, and urged Jet magazine to photograph him, so that everyone could see what had been done to her son.

On the 50th anniversary of his death, the New York Times called those and other Till photographs “iconic, textbook images of

the Jim Crow era.”

Now, Emmett Till’s life and death are chronicled in an exhibit at Riverside’s California Museum of Photography.

“The Impact of Images: Mamie Till’s Courage From

Tragedy” gathers together rare photos of Till, his family and the trial of his killers, who were found not guilty — more on that in a moment.

It’s hard to imagine a better title than “The Impact of

Images.” This is one powerful exhibit.

“It weaves together history that not enough people know about,” Doug Mcculloh, the museum’s senior curator, told me. “It’s photography as a weapon for change. And it did change things.”

Rosa Parks attended a rally about Till led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Weeks later, she refused to move to the rear of a bus, launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott. “I thought of Emmett Till,” she said later, “and I just couldn’t go back.”

I had some familiarity with Till’s story, but the exhibit was even more illuminating than I’d hoped. Last Tuesday I returned for a walk-through with Charles Long, its co-curator.

Long is no expert in photography. He teaches sculpture at UC Riverside. He surprised himself by taking on the project, but he felt

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE Mamie Till talks to the Black press corps at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Miss., during the trial of two men accused of killing her son, Emmett Till, in 1955. The men were found not guilty. This is among the photos on the life and death of the 14-yearold boy on display at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside.

DAVID ALLEN — STAFF “The Impact of Images” at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside gathers photos associated with the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955and the trial of his accused killers.