Sumner is a town in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The population was 407 at the 2000 census. Sumner is one of the two county seats of Tallahatchie County. It is located on the west side of the county and the Tallahatchie River, which runs through the county north–south. The other county seat is Charleston, located east of the river. Charleston was the first county seat, as settlement came from the east, and it is the larger of the two towns.
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American youth who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.
Keith Beauchamp is an American filmmaker based in Brooklyn and best known for his extensive investigation of and films about the lynching of Emmett Till.
Dana Schutz is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Schutz is known for her gestural, figurative paintings that often take on specific subjects or narrative situations as a point of departure.
America's 11 Most Endangered Places or America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places is a list of places in the United States that the National Trust for Historic Preservation considers the most endangered. It aims to inspire Americans to preserve examples of architectural and cultural heritage that could be "relegated to the dustbins of history" without intervention.
Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old youth murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, after accusations that he had whistled at a white grocery store cashier named Carolyn Bryant. For Emmett's funeral in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the coffin containing his body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."
President Lincoln's Cottage is a historic home used by Abraham Lincoln on the grounds of the Soldiers' Home, known today as the Armed Forces Retirement Home, near the Petworth neighborhood in Washington, D.C. In 2000 it was designated a national monument called President Lincoln and Soldiers' Home National Monument.
The Murder of Emmett Till is a 2003 documentary film produced by Firelight Media that aired on the PBS program American Experience. The film chronicles the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955. He was brutally murdered by two white men after a white woman falsely claimed that he had whistled at and groped her.
The Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse is located in Sumner, Mississippi, in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The county courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 6, 2007. It is located at 108 Main Street. The two-story brick courthouse building was constructed in 1910 in a Richardsonian Romanesque architecture style with a four-story tower on one corner. It was the site of the September 1955 Emmett Till murder trial. It has been restored to its appearance at the time of the trial, "to house a museum dedicated to the memory of the events surrounding Emmett Till's murder and trial. The project was expanded to focus on all the sites associated with the events. A driving tour has been developed and marked." As of 2018 there is no museum in the Courthouse.
The history of the 1954 to 1968 American civil rights movement has been depicted and documented in film, song, theater, television, and the visual arts. These presentations add to and maintain cultural awareness and understanding of the goals, tactics, and accomplishments of the people who organized and participated in this nonviolent movement.
Open Casket is a 2016 painting by Dana Schutz. The subject is Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old boy who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955. It was one of the works included at the 2017 Whitney Biennial exhibition in New York curated by Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks. The painting caused controversy, with protests and calls for the painting's destruction. Protests inside the museum lasted up to two days.
Emmett Till: How She Sent Him and How She Got Him Back is a painting completed by African-American artist Lisa Whittington in 2012. The painting is a portrait of a 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till. In 1955, he was visiting family in Money, Mississippi, from Chicago, when he was kidnapped and lynched by two white men for offending a white woman. Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till, held an open casket funeral, and allowed the media to cover it, as well as the physical appearance of Emmett Till's body. She had said, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby." As of February 2019, Emmett Till: How She Sent Him and How She Got Him Back, is displayed at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi. The original work is mixed media on canvas, and is 24 inches in length by 36 inches in height.
Demond "Brent" Leggs is an African American architectural historian and preservationist from Paducah, Kentucky. Among his roles at the National Trust for Historic Preservation he has been the founding executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which has raised over $150 million since 2017 for the preservation of historic Black places across the country.
Women of the Movement is an American historical drama miniseries that premiered on ABC on January 6, 2022. Created by Marissa Jo Cerar, the series centers on Mamie Till-Mobley, played by Adrienne Warren, who devoted her life to seeking justice for her murdered son Emmett, played by Cedric Joe. Tonya Pinkins also co-stars as Alma Carthan, Emmett's grandmother.
Till is a 2022 biographical drama film directed by Chinonye Chukwu and written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu, and produced by Beauchamp, Reilly, and Whoopi Goldberg. It is based on the true story of Mamie Till, an educator and activist who pursued justice after the murder of her 14-year-old son Emmett in August 1955. The film stars Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie and Jalyn Hall as Emmett. Kevin Carroll, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Jayme Lawson, Tosin Cole, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Douglas Thompson, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Goldberg also appear in supporting roles.
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till is a 2005 documentary film about the murder of Emmett Till. It was directed by Keith Beauchamp. The film contributed to the case being reopened by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is a program formed in 2017 to aid stewards of Black cultural sites throughout the nation in preserving both physical landmarks, their material collections and associated narratives. It was organized under the auspices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The initiative which awards grants to select applicants and advocates of Black history is led by architectural historian Brent Leggs. It is the largest program in America to preserve places associated with Black history and has currently raised over $150 million.
Preservation Chicago is a historic preservation advocacy group in Chicago, Illinois, which formally commenced operations on October 23, 2001. The organization was formed by a group of Chicagoans who had assembled the previous year to save a group of buildings which included Coe Mansion, which had once housed Ranalli's pizzeria and The Red Carpet, a French restaurant that had been frequented by Jack Benny and Elizabeth Taylor. Other preservation campaigns that were instrumental in the founding of Preservation Chicago included St. Boniface Church, the Scherer Building, and the New York Life Insurance Building.
The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument is a United States national monument that honors Emmett Till, an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14, and his mother, Mamie Till, who became an advocate in the Civil Rights Movement. The monument includes three sites, one in Illinois and two in Mississippi, with a total area of 5.7 acres (2.3 ha). The monument is managed by the National Park Service. It was established by President Joe Biden on July 25, 2023, what would have been Emmett Till's 82nd birthday.
The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley House is a two flat apartment building in Chicago that in the 1950s was the home of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till. Located on South St. Lawrence Avenue in West Woodlawn, it was declared a Chicago Landmark in 2021, upon application of its then new owner Blacks-in-Green (BIG), a community and environmental non-profit development organization. It received a National Trust for Historic Preservation award in 2022.
