Mia Pierson wiped tears from her eyes as she left an exhibit dedicated to Emmett Till at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Thursday.
More than six decades later, the wounds from Till's brutal death still sting, said
Mia Pierson wiped tears from her eyes as she left an exhibit dedicated to Emmett Till at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Thursday.
More than six decades later, the wounds from Till's brutal death still sting, said Pierson, a family therapist from California.
Till was 14 when he was killed, the same age as many members of the youth group Pierson and her colleagues led through the museum.
"I see Emmett Till, and I see someone who could easily be one of our kids," said Erica Smith, who was part of the group, G1 ministries from Inglewood, California, who made the trek to the nation's capital.
In 1955, Till was beaten and murdered in Mississippi by two white men who were acquitted but later admitted to the heinous crime. The Justice Department, in a report revealed this week, told Congress that it has reopened the investigation into Till's death, citing "the discovery of new information."
Justice officials have declined to elaborate or explain what new information has been discovered. Both of Till's accused killers have died.
The exhibit dedicated to Till occupies an almost sacred space at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It's tucked into a small corner of the section showing life in the Jim Crow South, past the films of white racists beating black men at lunch counters, the segregated rail cars and a tower from Louisiana's notorious Angola prison. Meant to evoke Till's memorial service, the mood is somber. Pictures are prohibited.
In a museum dedicated to an often painful history, the message seems clear: Till's death, and the civil rights movement it helped inspire, require a special respect, even reverence. Till's casket stands in the middle of the room, open for all to see, as it was in 1955.
"I thought of Emmett Till," Rosa Parks once said, before she became a civil rights icon for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus, "and I could not go back."
News that the Justice Department plans to go back and investigate Till's death -- six decades later -- was met with a wide range of emotions at the museum on Thursday, from satisfaction to suspicion.
"These wounds will never heal," said Regi Tyner Sr., from Washington, D.C., as he left the Till exhibit. "It's alright to move forward with the investigation, but it still hurts. It hurts deeply."
Tyner said the fact that Till's killers escaped justice is particularly painful.
"They came and took this young man out of a house, in front of his relatives, and did whatever they wanted to do. That hurts deep. It's so painful I can't even really talk about it," he said.
Micah Griffie, from Pittsburgh, took her 10-year-old son, Michael, through the Till exhibit, explaining who Till was and why he was killed. For years, the story was that Till had whistled at a white woman at a store. But in a book published last year, the woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, recanted parts of her account.
Griffie told her son that the men who killed Till "had hatred in their hearts."
"The big thing about this story is that when things like this happen," Griffie explained, "the funeral director or the police will say, 'Let's have a closed casket.' But the mom had courage to open the casket and let the world see what happened to her baby. It was an expression of: This needs to stop."
Christina Ford, who, like Pierson, was with the G1 group from California, cried as she thought about the decision by Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, to keep her son's casket open for five days, refusing to hide the disfigured face of racial brutality.
"Let the people see what I have seen," Mobley said, in a quote prominently displayed at the entrance to the Till exhibit. "I think everybody needs to know what happened to Emmett Till."
"The fact that she was brave enough to do that," Ford said, brushing away a tear. "I hope our kids can see that and understand her part of