Lynched teen Till’s statue unveiled in Mississippi
GREENWOOD, Miss. — Hundreds of people applauded — and some wiped away tears — as a Mississippi community unveiled a larger-than-life statue of Emmett Till on Friday, not far from where white men kidnapped and killed the Black teenager over accusations he had flirted with a white woman in a country store.
“Change has come, and it will continue to happen,” Madison Harper, a senior at Leflore County High School, told a racially diverse audience at the statue’s dedication. “Decades ago, our parents and grandparents could not envision that a moment like today would transpire.”
The 1955 lynching became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.
Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago so the world could see the horrors inflicted on her 14-year-old son. Jet magazine published photos of his mutilated body, which was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi.
The 9-foot tall bronze statue in Greenwood’s Rail Spike Park is a jaunty depiction of the living Till in slacks, dress shirt and tie with one hand on the brim of a hat.
Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black residents of any state, now about 38%. Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, whose district encompasses the Delta, noted that Mississippi had no Black elected officials when Till was killed. He said Till’s death helped spur change.
“But you know, change has a way of becoming slower and slower,” said Thompson, the only Black member of Mississippi’s current congressional delegation. “What we have to do in dedicating this monument to Emmett Till is recommit ourselves to the spirit of making a difference in our community.”
The statue is about 10 miles from the crumbling remains of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money.
The statue’s unveiling coincided with the release this month of “Till,” a movie exploring Till-Mobley’s private
trauma over her son’s death and her transformation into a civil rights activist.
The Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., the last living witness to his cousin’s kidnapping, wasn’t able to travel from Illinois for Friday’s dedication.
“We just thank God someone is keeping his name out there,” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
He said some wrongly thought Till got what he deserved for breaking the taboo of flirting with a white woman, adding many people didn’t want to talk about the case for decades.
“Now there’s interest in it, and that’s a godsend,” Parker said. “You know what his mother said: ‘I hope he didn’t die in vain.’”
Greenwood and Leflore County are more than 70% Black, and officials have worked for years to bring the Till statue to reality. Democratic state Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood secured $150,000 in state funding, and a Utah artist, Matt Glenn, was commissioned to create the statue.
Jordan said he hopes it will draw tourists to learn more about the area’s history.
“Hopefully, it will bring all of us together,” he said.
Till and Parker had traveled from Chicago to spend the summer of 1955 with relatives in the deeply segregated Mississippi Delta. On Aug. 24, the two teens took a short trip with other young people to the store in Money. Parker said he heard Till whistle at shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant.
Four days later, Till was abducted in the middle of the night from his uncle’s home.
The kidnappers tortured and shot him, weighted his body down with a cotton gin fan and dumped him into the river.
Jordan, who is Black, was a college student in 1955 when he drove to the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner to watch the murder trial of two white men charged with killing Till: Carolyn’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam.
An all-white, all-male jury acquitted the two men, who later confessed to Look magazine that they killed Till.
Nobody has ever been convicted in the lynching. The U.S. Justice Department has opened multiple investigations starting in 2004 after receiving inquiries about whether charges could be brought against anyone still living.
The Justice Department reopened an investigation in 2018 after a 2017 book quoted Carolyn Bryant — now remarried and named Carolyn Bryant Donham — saying she lied when she claimed Till made sexual advances.
Relatives have publicly denied that Donham, who is in her 80s, recanted her allegations. The department closed that investigation in late 2021 without bringing charges.
The state has a few monuments to Black historical figures, including one honoring civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville.
Jordan won applause when he said Friday, “If some idiot tears it down, we’re going to put it right back up.”