Oh, they tragic life of emmett till. Whose 1955 murdo has been described as giving rosa parks the strength to sit down. And Martin Luther king jr. The courage to stand up. This is one of our great lives presentations in conjunction with the universities celebration of black history month. Id like first to thank our Program SponsorAes Corporation for their generous support of great lives it is this kind of support thats so crucial in making a serious possible as a Public Service to our community. Now speak of 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. Dr. Tell who has a doctorate from penn state. Has one numerous awards for both research and teaching. His research focuses on issues 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 endeavor he has been a long time partner with Emmett Till Commission of Tallahatchie County. His work has a strong public dimension. His scholarship is written for broad public audiences and he has worked extensively with the tel Memorial Commission to develop resources with which to convey the story of tillamera for the next generation. In addition to his work on emmett till dr. Tell continues to publish on the history of rhetoric and in particular its intersection with modern architecture. Heres a prolific public speaker since 2014. He has given nearly 50 public talks on the legacy of the till murder bringing that story to jails high schools Detention CentersPublic Libraries town halls local bookstores and elite universities across the country including tonight. Im happy to say the university of Mary Washington. Its a pleasure indeed to welcome to the great lives podium, dr. Dave tell. Good evening. Thanks to bill for that introduction. Thanks to ali for all the help getting here. Youll hear at the university of Mary Washington have an amazing lecture series. And its an honor to be a part of it. On august 28th 1955 emmett till passed from a life of joyful obscurity to a death of undrmed fame. If the reverend Wheeler Parker were here with us tonight. He would remind us that before till was an icon or a martyr. He was also. A boy and a jokester reverend parker is a cousin of emmett till his childhood best friend and the last living i witnessed to both the abduction and the murder and he was also for all things emmett till related my true north you might have heard reverend parker tells story on abc last month and if you did. You heard him talk about the funloving bicycle riding boy. That was the young till and 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. Before finding till in the next room its important to start with reverend parker because most of us. Especially me. Only no till as an icon. The boy whos lynching inspired a generation and launched a movement. We know him as a story that pushed rosa 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 Mamie Till Mobley has said that he did not die in vain. But if the reverend parker were here tonight, he would remind us that for all we know about till since 1955. We have lost the joyful obscurity of those first 14 years. And so in what follows im going to give you a glimpse into the long and dramatic afterlife of emmett till. My talk is not so much a biography of the boy. For that youd need the reverend parker. As it is a biography of his story because for 66 and a half years people have been telling till story. Or ignoring it. Or bending it. Or selling it. You might know what happened to emmett till in 1955 and 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 that his story 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 tills story because time and again. The chance to make a buck has fueled the outright suppression of the story or 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 until story might be it has also a commodity a commodity that has been told more for its cash value than for its moral lessons. And i think youll agree too that the money made on its telling has too often been spent in the service. Of White Supremacy and so this evening, im going to share with you three stories about how till story has been hijacked. And ill conclude with a small glimpse of how the story is being reclaimed. But as i tell these stories, please dont forget that before till was an icon of the movement and before his story was bought and sold. He was a 14 year old 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 africanamerican boy living in chicago in in august of that year. While visiting his cousins in the mississippi delta he whistled that Carolyn Bryant the 21 year old white shopkeeper. Of bryants grocery and meat market in the heart of the mississippi delta and 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 pture of the bloated and beaten 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 allwhite jury and three months after the trial Martin Luther king jr. Heard 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 king was in detroit, and he was still talking. About emmett till and you might recognize his language. King said i have a dream this afternoon that there will be a day when we no 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 and 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 or not the erasure of till from the official text of the Civil Rights Movement proved all to 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 white in nine of them black decided that 50 years of silence was intolerable. And so they organized they fundraised. And they use 15,000 of Morgan Freemans money to do something that had never been done before they told story on the landscape of the mississippi delta. That is they put up signs. But no sooner. Had those signs been put up than they were plagued by vandalism. The vandalism was extensive. Persistent and targeted this was the first sign in mississip ever to acknowledge. Emttill it lasted a matter weeks before it was painted. This sign stands in front of brides grocery and meat market if you could read this writing it would tell you that bryants grocery and meat market is ground zero of the america Civil Rights Movement. Thats debatable nationally, but in mississippi, its gospel truth in 2017. The sign was defaced with acid. These two aluminum poles stand at grab all landing. Say were in 1955 tellsod was pulled from the water a sign was erected. In the spring of 2008 to mark spot it was stolen so quickly that i don even have a picture of the pre stolen sign. But the nonprofit the emotional Memorial Commission a group ive worked with they replaced the sign within months and from 2008 to 2016. This sign accumulated 317 bullet le it was removed in 2016 and replaced by this sign if youre keeping track at home. This is the third sig to mark the spot where tils 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 answer is 32 days. This picture broke in the summer of 2019. These are three Fraternity Brothers from the universit of mississippi posing with assault fles. And hunting rifles in front of the sign. Well comeack to the vandalism at the end. But for now, i want to note that in 2014 the vandalism became so targeted and so persistent that the emmett till the nonprofit. In Tallahatchie County called a twoday summit. On the topic of telling tills 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 agreed to help the nonprofit make a Smartphone App to tell the story of emmett till. Our thinking was so simple right if its easy to shoot a roadside marker in rural tallahassee county. Its more difficult to shoot. A Smartphone App and so this launched in the summer of 2019. Its called the emmett till memory project if i can ask of you anything, please download it right every download helps us 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 an independent firm to give us feedback on this app and they told us. That our content will spot on but we needed more shine. We need to augmented reality and we needed a better User Experience and so for the first time. Weve hired professional graphic designers from the rhode island at school of design and we have professional Software Developers from the south side of chicago and just last week we pitched the till family on the newest version of the emmett till memory project the Smartphone App. They gave it the green light which means that the only thing that stands between us and the new app. Is a half Million Dollars thats a significant hurdle, but were grant writing. And fundraising for it as we speak. As i was researching the app. I was driving around the mississippi delta and i kept hearing stories that i had never heard before and that caught me off guard because i had been telling emmett till stories. For over a decade by this point but the stories i was hearing as i drove around were not about the murder per se they were about the story of the murder. And the ways that the story changed over time about who changed it. And to what ends . And these stories became my book. Remembering emmett till is filled with stories about how people have changed the facts of the murder. To benefit themselves financially politically or both and so tonight. All im going to do is give you three examples three stories each one about how racism and the pursuit of money are changing the story. We think we know about tells murder. Ill conclude by returning once more to the vandalized signs some of the absolutely incredible responses to the vandalism. And a few reflections on what all this emmett till storytelling teaches us. About our own Racial Climate so the first story is about Sunflower CountySunflower County, mississippi. The only thing you need to know about Sunflower County for this story to make sense is well, two things first. Thats hill was killed in Sunflower County and second that it is the only county only relevant county in mississippi that has no commemorative investment. There are no plaques no signs. No museums. No memorials. No nothing and thats kind of counterintuitive. You would think. That the murder site gets the premiere commemorative investment, but the opposite. Is actually the case. And it didnt just happen that way. And this story well tell you why it happened. It starts. At 7pm on the night of october 28th 1955. Thats two months. After the murder and one month after the trial on that night. The freelance journalist William Bradford. Huey met with two of the murderers their wives and their lawyers to share a bottle of whiskey and swap stories. You see huey, hes the journalist. He wanted to tell the story of tills murder for look magazine, but the murder was two months in the past and he knew that the only way he could publish yet. Another story about the murder was if he had the story from the mouths of the murderers themselves, and so he paid them. He paid the murderers jw milam and roy bryant 3,150 and he paid their lawyers 1,269 and in exchange they signed consent and release forms. That looked like this you dont need thein print, but i will direct your attention to the bottom where its signed. By jw milam the murderer these forms were thpre of publication. Because look magazine refused to print the story unless every named participant. Signed a waiver now in letters of october 12 and october 18, William Bradford. Huey told his editor at look that he knew that four men were involved in the murder and he boasted that he could name them all. But by october 23 he knew that he could only obtain waivers from the two men who had already been tried and were therefore no longer in legal jeopardy. So he rode his boss yet another letter and here. Im reading quote there were not after all foreman in the abduction and murder party. There were only two. And thus because he could only obtain two consent and release forms. The murder party shranked from four people to two people and this would move the murder site. Across county lines during the trial. A guy named willie reed a sharecropper testified for the prosecution that the murder happened in this barn near the town of drew in Sunflower County and this was true. But William Bradford huey could not tell the story because the only reason that the murder happened in Sunflower County. Was that jw milams brother leslie. Their managed the sturtevant plantation on which there was a in sufficiently isolated. For the purposes of the night. But leslie milam had not been tried. Did not sign a release form and so he could not be implicated. In hueys story and so William Bradford huey moved the murder site 16. 5 miles east to an abandoned spot of riverbank along the tallahatchee river in Tallahatchie County. His article came out in january of 1956 and at that time this was an unprecedented geography. Because huey was the first person. To suggest a two county version of the murder in which till was kidnapped in lafleur county. Before being killed and disposed ofllahchie county the influence ofis story is relatively easy to track. You jue maps. Before hueys that is before januaryf 56 maps of tills murder lookis note that there are three counties Sunflower County is in blue and the barn is clearly. Identified the amazing part is what happened after hueys 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 and this one from 2010 placed the murder in tallahatchee county and left Sunflower County off the map entirely. Now who cares . When i met tills cousins, simeon wright. The late swimming right in 2014. He told me it doesnt really matter where till was killed. What matters. Is that till was killed for being the wrong color at the wrong time in the wrong place and until his passing mr. Right refused to travel to Sunflower County and as you can see here in 2010 when he published his own account of the murder. He left Sunflower County. Off of his map i get his point. We dont want to get so lost in the minutia of the murder that we forget the basic issue. Of racism but the only reason that Sunflower County was eliminated from the itinerary of tills lynching was to protect white murderer leslie milam from prosecution. And so when i focus on the question of where till was killed im not trying to evade the allimportant question of race. Im trying to suggest that racism has infected more of this story than we have ever. Acknowledged even these maps are products