Emmett Louis Till

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Emmett

 

A pivotal catalyst for the American Civil Rights Movement.

 

Early Life
  • July 25, 1941: Emmett Louis Till is born in Chicago, Illinois.
  • 1947: At age 6, Till contracts polio, which leaves him with a lifelong stutter.
  • 1954: Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, takes a photo of him on Christmas Day; this becomes one of the most recognizable images of him. 
The 1955 Mississippi Trip
  • August 20, 1955: Till leaves Chicago by train with his great-uncle, Moses Wright, to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi.
  • August 21, 1955: Till arrives in Mississippi.
  • August 24, 1955: Till and his cousins visit Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market. Accounts differ, but it is widely reported that Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant, the 21-year-old white shopkeeper.
  • August 28, 1955: Around 2:30 a.m., Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnap Till from his great-uncle’s home at gunpoint. They brutally torture and murder him.
  • August 31, 1955: Till’s body is discovered in the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a 75-pound cotton gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire. 
The Trial and Immediate Aftermath
  • September 3, 1955: Till’s body returns to Chicago. His mother insists on an open-casket funeral so the world can see the brutality of the lynching.
  • September 15, 1955: Jet magazine publishes photos of Till’s mutilated corpse, shocking the nation.
  • September 19–23, 1955: The trial takes place in Sumner, Mississippi. An all-white, all-male jury acquits Bryant and Milam after just 67 minutes of deliberation.
  • January 1956: Protected by double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam admit to the murder in an interview with Look magazine, for which they were paid $4,000. 
Legacy and Recent Developments
  • May 2004: The FBI reopens the investigation into Till’s murder to see if others were involved.
  • June 2005: Till’s body is exhumed for autopsy; results confirm he died of a gunshot wound to the head.
  • March 29, 2022: President Joe Biden signs the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime.
  • June 2022: An unserved 1955 kidnapping warrant for Carolyn Bryant is discovered in a courthouse basement, but a grand jury declines to indict her.
  • July 25, 2023: The White House establishes the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, with sites in Mississippi and Chicago. 

 

“Everyone who knew Till described him as a responsible and funny person.”

 

till_emmett

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25th, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the only son of Mamie Till, a secretary working for the Airforce. Emmett Till lived in a “colored” middle-class neighborhood.

 

Emment and Mamie Till

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EMMETT–2C–6PM_MAIN 1115 17 KOZ15

“Mamie Till’s Voice Still Speaks To Her Son’s Legacy More than 60 years after Emmett Till’s brutal murder, his legacy continues to shape America. In 2003, Mamie Till wrote Death of Innocence, telling the story of her son’s life and his death. In 2018, a film based on Mamie’s memoir went into production, along with a movie based on a play about the impact of Emmett’s death. Jay-Z and Will Smith announced a collaboration on an HBO miniseries about Emmett, and Whoopi Goldberg was also involved in a film called Till. The attention on Emmett’s murder more than half a century later stands testament to his impact on the civil rights movement and race relations in America.“

“Emmett experienced the ugliness of Mississippi, that thing that everybody feared, that thing that everybody wanted to avoid.“

DEBORAH WATTS & TIYE RAHMAH

Cousins of Emmett Till

I thought of Emmett Till and I just couldn’t go back.

ROSA PARKS

—Rosa Parks, on her refusal to move to the back of the bus, launching the Montgomery bus boycott.

In” Montgomery a few months after the murder, Rosa Parks attended a rally for Till, led by Martin Luther King Jr. Soon after, she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white passenger. The incident sparked a year-long well-organized grassroots boycott of the public bus system. The boycott was designed to force the city to change its segregation policies. Parks later said when she did not get up and move to the rear of the bus, “I thought of Emmett Till and I just couldn’t go back.”

According to author Clayborne Carson, Till’s death and the widespread coverage of the students integrating Little Rock Central High School in 1957 were especially profound for younger blacks: “It was out of this festering discontent and an awareness of earlier isolated protests that the sit-ins of the 1960s were born.” After seeing pictures of Till’s mutilated body, in Louisville, Kentucky, young Cassius Clay (later famed boxer Muhammad Ali) and a friend took out their frustration by vandalizing a local railyard, causing a locomotive engine to derail.

In 1963, Sunflower County resident and sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer was jailed and beaten for attempting to register to vote. The next year, she led a massive voter registration drive in the Delta region, and volunteers worked on Freedom Summer throughout the state. Before 1954, 265 black people were registered to vote in three Delta counties, where they were a majority of the population. At this time, blacks made up 41% of the total state population. The summer Emmett Till was killed, the number of registered voters in those three counties dropped to 90. By the end of 1955, fourteen Mississippi counties had no registered black voters. The Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 registered 63,000 black voters in a simplified process administered by the project; they formed their own political party because they were closed out of the Democratic Regulars in Mississippi.” – Wikiwand

 

 

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iforcolor

ARCHIVIST, EDUCATOR, HISTORIAN, and ARTiST
Dale Ricardo Shields is highly accomplished African American actor, director, producer, and educator with a distinguished career in theatre and academia.

Here's a summary of his background and achievements:

Early Life and Family:
Born on November 4, 1952, in Cleveland, Ohio.
His family has a strong musical background; his grandfather and father were founding members of the Shields Brothers Gospel Quartet of Ohio, and his mother was part of the Turner Gospel Singers.
He is a cousin of boxing promoter Don King.
Education:
Graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in 1970.
Holds both a BFA (1975) and MFA (1995) from Ohio University.

Career and Contributions
Theatre Professional:
Actor: Has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and in regional productions. His television credits include The Cosby Show, Another World, Guiding Light, Saturday Night Live, and the ITV series Special Needs. He has also appeared in commercials and films.
Director and Stage Manager: Has extensive professional credits in these roles, including projects at Lincoln Center, The Henry Street Settlement House (New Federal Theatre), The Negro Ensemble Company, and The Joseph Papp Public Theatre.
Assistant Director: Served as assistant to Lloyd Richards and assistant director for the New Federal Theatre premiere of Ossie Davis's play A Last Dance With Sybil starring Ruby Dee and Earl Hyman.

Educator:
Professor: He is a Professor of Acting, Directing, Black Theatre, Black Studies, and Stage Management. He has taught at various institutions, including Ohio University, The College of Wooster, Denison University, Macalester College, Susquehanna University (as artist-in-residence), and SUNY Potsdam.
Workshops and Programs: Conducted workshops for Joseph Papp's Playwriting in the Schools Program (PITS) at The Public Theatre for six seasons and represented the United States at the ASSITEJ Theatre Festival in London, England, in 1988.
Artistic Activist and Historian:

Iforcolor.org: Creator and archivist for the Black History website Iforcolor.org, dedicated to preserving and sharing information about African Americans and artists of color. He also maintains the "Black Theatre/African American Voices" website on Facebook.
Project1VOICE Liaison: Serves as the Project1VOICE Liaison for the state of Ohio, directing "One Play One Day" events in Cleveland since 2011.

Awards and Recognition:
The Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award: Recipient in 2017.
Paul Robeson Award: Recipient in 2021 (jointly presented by the Actors' Equity Association and Actors' Equity Foundation).
AUDELCO/"VIV" Special Achievement Award: Received in 2017.
Tony Award Nominee: Nominated for the "Excellence in Theatre Education Award" in 2015 and 2017.
Ebony Bobcat Network (EBN) Legend Award: Received from Ohio University in 2022.
ENCORE AWARD / The Actors Fund: Received in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024.
Outstanding Professor Awards: Has received two of these and three "Educational Program of the Year" awards as a university professor.
The HistoryMakers archives: Interviewed and included in The HistoryMakers archives, permanently housed in the Library of Congress.
Dale Ricardo Shields is recognized for his profound impact on the lives of his students and his unwavering dedication to preserving and promoting Black theatre history and culture.