Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America  – Mamie Till-Mobley (Author) Christopher Benson (Author) The mother of Emmett Till recounts the story of her life, her son’s tragic death, and the dawn of the civil rights movement–with a foreword by the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old African American, Emmett Till, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped from his bed in the middle of the night by two white men and brutally murdered. His crime: allegedly whistling at a white woman in a convenience store. The killers were eventually acquitted. What followed altered the course of this country’s history–and it was all set in motion by the sheer will, determination, and courage of Mamie Till-Mobley, whose actions galvanized the civil rights movement, leaving an indelible mark on our racial consciousness. Death of Innocence is an essential document in the annals of American civil rights history and a painful yet beautiful account of a mother’s ability to transform tragedy into boundless courage and hope. Praise for Death of Innocence “A testament to the power of the indestructible human spirit [that] speaks as eloquently as the diary of Anne Frank.”–The Washington Post Book World “With this important book, [Mamie Till-Mobley] has helped ensure that the story of her son (and her own story) will not soon be forgotten. . . . A riveting account of a tragedy that upended her life and ultimately the Jim Crow system.”–Chicago Tribune “The book will . . . inform or remind people of what a courageous figure for justice [Mamie Till-Mobley] was and how important she and her son were to set the stage for the modern-day civil rights movement.”–The Detroit News “Poignant . . . In his mother’s descriptions, Emmett becomes more than an icon; he becomes a living, breathing youngster–any mother’s child.”–Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Powerful . . . [Mamie Till-Mobley’s] courage transformed her loss into a moral compass for a nation.”–Black Issues Book Review Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Special Recognition – BlackBoard Nonfiction Book of the Year

Take a drive through the Mississippi Delta today and you’ll find a landscape dotted with memorials to major figures and events from the civil rights movement. Perhaps the most chilling are those devoted to the murder of Emmett Till, a tragedy of hate and injustice that became a beacon in the fight for racial equality. The ways this event is remembered have been fraught from the beginning, revealing currents of controversy, patronage, and racism lurking just behind the placid facades of historical markers.
In Remembering Emmett Till, Dave Tell gives us five accounts of the commemoration of this infamous crime. In development no one could have foreseen, Till’s murder—one of the darkest moments in the region’s history—has become an economic driver for the Delta. Historical tourism has transformed seemingly innocuous places like bridges, boat landings, gas stations, and riverbeds into sites of racial politics, reminders of the still-unsettled question of how best to remember the victim of this heinous crime. Tell builds an insightful and persuasive case for how these memorials have altered the Delta’s physical and cultural landscape, drawing potent connections between the dawn of the civil rights era and our own moment of renewed fire for racial justice.

In this sensitive inquiry, historian Stephen J. Whitfield probes Till’s death; its ideological roots; the potent myths concerning race, sexuality, and violence; and the incident’s enduring effects on American national life. In August 1955, the mutilated body of Emmett Till―a fourteen-year-old Black Chicago youth―was pulled from Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River. Abducted, severely beaten, and finally thrown into the river with a weight fastened around his neck with barbed wire, Till, an eighth-grader, was killed for allegedly whistling at a White woman. The nation was horrified by Till’s death. When the all-White, all-male jury hastily acquitted the two white defendants, the outcry reached a frenzied pitch―spurring a fury that would prove critical in the mobilization of Black resistance to White racism in the Deep South. In this sensitive inquiry, historian Stephen J. Whitfield probes Till’s death; its ideological roots; the potent myths concerning race, sexuality, and violence; and the incident’s enduring effects on American national life. As he recreates the trial, its participants, and the social structure of the Delta, Whitfield examines how White rural Mississippians actually tried “two of their own.” Though they were acquitted, these same defendants were soon being ostracized by their own neighbors, and within four months of Till’s death, Southern Blacks were staging the historic Montgomery bus boycott―the first major battle in the coming war against racial injustice that would lead to the passage of civil rights legislation a decade later.

Murder in The Delta: The Emmett Till Story
by Michael Joseph Miller
Published Apr 07, 2016.
A wolf-whistle, a brutal murder, a movement ignited.
Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black youth from the South Side of Chicago traveled to Money, Mississippi for a summer vacation. It was 1955; racial tensions were extremely reprehensible in the South. During his visit, the youth became embroiled in a wolf-whistle incident with a white woman, which led to his brutal murder. The atrocity of Emmett Till’s lynch/murder set off a chain reaction that emerged as the vanguard event which catapulted one of the most extensive civil rights movements in U.S. History.

The Blood of Emmett Till Hardcover – January 31, 2017
by Timothy B. Tyson (Author).
This extraordinary New York Times bestseller reexamines a pivotal event of the civil rights movement—the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till—“and demands that we do the one vital thing we aren’t often enough asked to do with history: learn from it” (The Atlantic).
In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. Only weeks later, Rosa Parks thought about young Emmett as she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Five years later, Black students who called themselves “the Emmett Till generation” launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle for civil rights into a mass movement. Till’s lynching became the most notorious hate crime in American history.
But what actually happened to Emmett Till—not the icon of injustice, but the flesh-and-blood boy? A part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till “unfolds like a movie” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), drawing on a wealth of new evidence, including a shocking admission of Till’s innocence from the woman in whose name he was killed. “Jolting and powerful” (The Washington Post), the book “provides fresh insight into the way race has informed and deformed our democratic institutions” (Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Carry Me Home) and “call us to the cause of justice today” (Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP).

The Ballad of Emmet Till
by Ifa Bayeza
directed by Oz Scott
Goodman Theatre, Chicago,IL
G.W. (Skip) Mercier- set, puppet, and costume designer.

By IFA BAYEZA, Directed by OZ SCOTT CAST KAREN ALDRIDGE – Lizabeth Wright / Sistuh Mary / Ruby Hurley KIRK ANDERSON – Attorney J.J. Breedland / Elmer Kimbrell PHILLIP JAMES BRANNON – Maurice Wright / Too Tight Collins / Willie Reed JOSEPH ANTHONY BYRD – Emmett “Bo” Till CLIFF CHAMBERLAIN – Roy Bryant / Judge Curtis M. Swango DEIDRIE HENRY – Mamie Till-Bradley KRISTINA JOHNSON – Caroline Bryant NAMBI E. KELLEY – Ruthie May Crawford / Amanda Bradley BRIAN MCCASKILL – Special Prosecutor Robert Bruce Smith / Leslie Milam MOROCCO OMARI – Wheeler Parker / Dr. T.R.M. Howard/ H.L. Loggins SAMUEL G. ROBERSON, JR. – Simeon Wright / Jimmy Hicks CHRIS SULLIVAN – J.W. Milam / Sheriff Strider JOHN WESLEY – Mose Wright / B.J. Washington CREATIVE TEAM AND CREW G.W. MERCIER – Scenic Design MYRNA COLLEY-LEE – Costume Design VICTOR EN YU TAN – Lighting Design RICHARD WOODBURY – Sound Design KATHRYN BOSTIC – Composer JOHN BOESCHE – Projection Design NICK SANDYS – Fight Consultant TANYA PALMER – Dramaturg ADAM BELCUORE – Casting JOSEPH DRUMMOND – Production Stage Manager T. PAUL LYNCH – Stage Manager

Composer, Mary D. Watkins, left, and librettist, Clare Coss, right, pose for a portrait at Ripley-Grier Rehearsals in New York, NY on March 17, 2022.
Nate Palmer