But iran along with these Television Companies support cspan 2, as a Public Service. Welcome to tonights lecture on the tragic life of emmett tell. It was 1955 him, has been described as given rosa parks the strength to sit down, and martin lurking junior the courage to stand up. This is one of our great lives presentation, with the University Celebration of black history month. Id like first to thank the Program SponsorAbs Corporation for the generous support. Its this kind of support that so crucial and making the series possible as a Public Service to our community. Our speaker this evening is university of kansas professor dave tell, author of the 2019 book titled, remembering emmett till which will be available for sale and signing in the foyer at the conclusion of tonights program. Doctor tell, who has a doctorate from penn state, has won new was around for both research and teaching. His research focuses on issue of race, memory, and the digital humanities. Since 2014, he has focused in particular on the legacy of the murder of emmett till. In which he has been a long time partner with Emmett Till Memorial Commission of Tallahatchie County. His work has a taunt strong public dimensions, scholarship is written for broad public audiences, hes worked extensively with the tally Memorial Commission to develop resources which to convey their story of tills murder for the next generation. In addition to his work on emmett till, doctor tell continues to publish on the history of rhetoric and particular its intersection with modern architecture. He has a prolific public speaker since 2014, hes given nearly 50 public talks on the legacy of the till murder, bringing that story to jails, high schools, detention centers, public libraries, town halls, local bookstores and elite universities across the country including tonight im happy to say the university of mary washington. Its great dave tell. [applause] good evening, thanks to bill for that introduction, thanks to ali for all the help getting here. You hear at the university of mary washington, have and it amazing lecture series. Its an honor to be part of it. On august 28th, 1955, emmett till passed from a life of joyful obscurity to a death of of un dreamt fame. If the reverend Wheeler Parker were here with us, hed remind us that the foretell wasnt ike on, or a martyr he was also a boy and a jokester. Reverend parker is a cousin of emmett till, his childhood best friend, the last living i witnessed about the abduction and murder. Hes also for all things emmett till related my true north. You may have heard reverent parker tell till story on abc last month, if you did you heard him talk about the fun loving, bicycle riding boy that was the young till. You also heard him talk about the sheer terror of being in the unlit sharecroppers cabin in the dark hours of the mississippi night, when two of tills killers, went through the house bed to bed pausing to interrogate parker until finding tell in the next room. Its important to start with reverend parker because most of us, especially me, only notable as an icon the. Boy whose lynching inspired a generation and launched a move mid. We know him as a story that puts most parks into action, as a tortured body on the pages of jet magazine, or as a turning point in the life of john lewis. We know, as his mother maybe till has said, that he didnt die in vain. But if the reverend parker were here tonight, he remind us that for all we know about till since 1955, weve lost the joyful obscurity of those first 14 years. And so, in what follows, im giving you a glimpse to the long and dramatic afterlife of emmett till. My top is not so much a biography of the boy, for that you need the reverend parker, as it is a biography of his story. For 66 and a half years, people have been telling tills story, or ignoring it, or bending it, or selling it. You might know what happened to emmett till in 1955, if you dont its fine, ill bring you up to speed. But you might not know that the way, you might not know the ways the history has been suppressed, altered, and sold since 1955. Suppressed, altered and, sold those three key verbs are at the heart and core of the biography of emmett till story time and time again and the chance to make a book has fueled the outright suppression of the story, the alteration of key details. And so, by the end of the evening, i hope youll agree with me that there is simply no way to look back at the history of emmett till storytelling. And not conclude that whatever else the till story might be, its also a commodity, a commodity that has been told more for its cash value, then for its moral lessons. I think youll agree to, the money made on its telling has too often been spent on the service of white supremacy. So, this evening all share with your three stories about how till story has been hijacked, and ill conclude with a small glimpse of how the stories being reclaimed. As i tell these stories, please dont forget that before tell was an icon of the movement, before his story was bought and sold, he was a 14yearold kid who liked bikes. To get us started, and to make sure were on the same page, let me take you back to the summer of 1955. At that time emmett till was an African American boy living in chicago in august of that year, while visiting his cousins in the mississippi delta he whistled at caroline bryant, 20 year old white shopkeeper, of bryants grocery in the heart of the mississippi delta. For that, three days later he was lynched, which in this case means he was kidnapped, tortured, shot, and dropped in a river. Five days later, the body was back in chicago where hundreds of thousands of people saw it. Among them the photographer, david jackson, whose picture of the bloated unbeaten body circulated so widely that you can probably picture it in your head, even if youve never seen it. Three weeks after the photograph, two of the murders were acquitted by an all white jury, and three months after the trial Martin Luther king day unitard tills story told from the pulpit of his own dexter Avenue Baptist Church in montgomery, and he never forgot it. Eight years later, on june 23rd, 1963, cummings and detroit and he was still talking about emmett till. You might recognize his language. King said, i have a dream this afternoon that there will be a day we know longer face the atrocities that emmett till had to face. I have a dream. Two months later, dr. King gave his dream speech a second time, it worked so well in detroit that he tried it again this time from the steps of the lincoln memorial, when he gave the speech a second time two things happened. First, the speech became famous perhaps the single most famous speech in all of American History, but a second thing happened, the reference to emmett till was cut. In the same moment that the speech became the primary document of the Civil Rights Movement, till lost his place in that document, now, i dont imagine that king cut till intentionally. I kind of think of the dream speech as a jazz performance, its a little bit different every time. But intentional are not, the erasure of tell from the official text of the Civil Rights Movement, proved all too prophetic. Because for the remainder of the 20th century, tills story was never well told. In fact, and get this, 49 years and 11 months separate the murder from the first dollar ever dropped until commemoration in the state of mississippi. In 2005, a local group of citizens in Tallahatchie County, nine of them wyatt, nine of them black decided that 50 years of silence was intolerable. So, they organized, they fundraised, and they used 15,000 of Morgan Freemans money to do something that had never been done before. They told tills stories on the landscape of the mississippi delta. They put up signs, but no sooner had those signs been t up, then they were plagued by vandalism. The vandiswas extensive, persistent, and targedthis was the first sign of mississippi ever to acknowledge, emmett till, and lasted a matter of weeks before it was painted. This sign stands in front of bryants grocery an meat market, if you can read th writing, it would tell you that bryans grocery and meat market is ground zero of the American Civil Rights movement. Thats debatable, nationally, but in mississippi its gospel truth. In 2017, the sinus defaced with acid. These two site where a 1955, tills body was pulled from the water, assign was erected in the spring of 2008 to mark the spot. It was stolen so quickly, i dont even have a picture of nonprofit, the emmett tillhe moy mmission, a group ive worked with they replaced the sin within months. So, 2008 2016 this sign accumulated 317 bullet holes. It was removed in 2016, replaced by this sign, if youre keeping track at home this is the third sign to mark the spot or tills body was pulled from the water. The first sign was stolen and never recovered, the second was filled with 300 odd bullet holes, this one dedicated in the summer of 2018, do you know how long it lasted before it too was filled with bullet holes. The answers 32 days. This picture broke in the summer 2019, three Fraternity Brothers from the university of missisipi posing with assault rifles. And hunting rifles in front of the sign, well come back to the vandalism at the end. But for now, i want to know that 2014 the vandalism became so targeted and so persistent, the emmett till did not profit in Tallahatchie County. It called a two day summit on the topic of telling tales story in the context of vandalism, the till family was there, the fbi was there, and against all odds i was there. And right before i left, i agree to help the nonprofit make a smartphone app, to tell the story of emmett till, i think it was so simple, right if its easy to shoot a roadside marker and rural Tallahatchie County, its more difficult to shoot a smartphone app. So, this launched in summer 2018 its called the emmett till memory project, if i could ask of you anything, please download it. Every download helps, its free, wherever you get your apps, and every download helps us make more money to make the next version. And thats on topic because in the summer of 2020, we hired independent firm to give us feedback on this app. They told us, that our content was spot on, but we needed more shiny, augmented reality, we needed a better user experience. For the first time, weve hired professional graphic designers from the Rhode Island School of design, we have professional Software Developers from the south side of chicago. And just last week, we pitch the till family on the newest version of the emmett till memory project, the smartphone app. They gave it the green light, which means the only thing that stands between us and the new app is a half Million Dollars that is a significant hurdle but we are grant writing and fund raising for it as we speak. And as i was researching the app, i was driving around the mississippi delta. I was listening to stories i number heard before. It caught me off guard, i had been telling emmett till stories for over a decade at this point the stories i was hearing other drove around or not about the murder, per se but they were about the story of the murder the. Way that the stories changed over time. About who changed it and to whats and. The stories became my book. Remembering emmett till is filled with stories on how people have changed the facts of the murder. To benefit themselves financially, politically, or both. So tonight all im going to do is give you three examples, three stories. Each one on how racism in the pursuit of money is changing the story we think we know about emmett tills murder. I will return once more to the vandalize science. The absolutely incredible responses to the vandalism, and a few reflections on whats the emmett till story teaches us for the story to make sense. Well, two things. First, till was killed in Sunflower County. Second, the only relevant county in mississippi that has no commemorative investment. No plaque, science, museums, memorials, no nothing that is kind of counter intuitive. You would think that the murderous i get the premier commemorative investment. But the opposite is actually the case. And it didnt just happen that way. This story, i will tell you why it happened. It starts at 7 pm on the night of october 28th, 1955. That is two months after the murder and one month after the trial. That night, freelance jettison William Bradley he met with two of the murders. Their wives, and their lawyers, to share a bottle of whiskey and swap stories. He we, he is the journalist. He wanted to tell the story of emmett tills murder for look magazine. The murderer two months in the past, he knew the only way he could publish yet another story about the murder if he had the story from the mouths of the murderous themselves. He paid them. He paid them j. W. Milan and would bryant 3,150. He paid their lawyers 1,269. In exchange, they signed consent and relee forms that looked like this. You dont need the fine print but i will direct your attention to the bottom where it was signed by jay w milan, the murderer. These forms for the price of publication. Look magazine refused to print the story unless every named participants signed a waiver. And letters of october 12th and october 18th, William Bradford huey told his editor that he knew four men were involved in the murder. He boasted that he could name them all. But by october 23rd, he knew that he could only obtain waivers from the two men who had already been tried, and therefore were in no legal jeopardy. He wrote his boss another letter. Quote, there were not after all four men in the abduction and murder party, there were only two. And thus, because he could only obtain to consent and release forms, the murder party shrank from four people to two people. This would move the murder say across county lines. During the trial, a guy name willie reed, a sharecroppers, testified for the prosecution that the murder happened in this barn, near the town of drew in Sunflower County. This was true but, William Bradford huey could not tell the story because the only reason the murder happened in Sunflower County buzz j w. Milans brother, leslie, there manage a plantation on which a barn was sufficiently isolated for the purposes of the night. But leslie milan had not been tried. He did not sign a release form. He could not be implicated in hueys story. So William Bradley fewer move the murders that 16. 5 miles east to an abandoned spot of riverbank along the Tallahatchie River in Tallahatchie County his article came out in 1956, at time with was an unprecedented geography. He was the rst person to suggest a two county version of the murder. Kidnapped in the flurry county befg lled and disped of and Tallahatchie County. The influence of storately easy to track. You just foow the maps. Huestories, before january of 1956 maps untils murder looked like this. Know that there are three counties. Sunflower countys and blue, the barn is clearly identified. The amazing part is what happened after huey story was published in january of 1956. Every single map of the murder published between 1956 and 2005, including this one from 1963, this one from 1988, this one from 2010, places the murder in Tallahatchie County and left Sunflower County off of the map entirely. No, who cares . When im phils cousin the lay simeone right in 2014, he told me it doesnt really matter where till was killed. What matters is the till was killed for being the wrong color, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Until his passing mr. Wright refused to travel to Sunflower County. In 2010 when he published his own account of the murder he left Sunflower County off of the map. I get his point. We dont want to get so lost in the minutiae of the murder that we forget the basic issue of racism. The only reason that Sunflower County was eliminated from the itinerary of till alleging was to protect murderer leslie mylan of potential prosecution. When i focus on the question of where was killed im not trying to evade the allimportant question of race, im trying to suggest that racism infected even more of the story than we ever acknowledged. Even these maps are products of racism. Why . Because claiming that till was killed in Tallahatchie County is another way of saying that only two men were guilty, and both of them faced a jury of their peers. Although none of that is true, for those who visit the delta it remains all too easy that till was killed in Tallahatchie County because to this day tallahatchie counties packed with memorials while the murder site sits unmarked, on private property, on the premises of a local dentist. That is it for sty number one. Can you see ho racism and the pursuit of dentist. That is it for story number one. Can you see how racism and the pursuit of Profit Shifting the story untils final night for 50 years, every single map was wrong. They would only name releases for people and historian. The next story is about brands grocery in meat market in the town of money, mississippi. This is where emmett till whistled. This is where the building was at the time of the murder in august, 1945. The years have not been kind to yant grocery. Before i tell you the story iust want to click through some images. This is the building i the 80s, 90s, but