‘Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley: Let the World See,’ is a new exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Little Rock. It details the life and tragic murder of Emmett Till in 1955.
A warning: This story contains graphic descriptions.
In his final essay, published posthumously in the New York Times in 2020, lifelong civil rights activist John Lewis wrote: “Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor.”
Lewis was 15 years old when Emmett Till was lynched, near the small town of Money, Mississippi. Till was just 14.
While the teen’s slaying left an indelible mark on Lewis, Mosaic Templars Cultural Center Director Key Fletcher explains, his death ultimately became the spark that ignited the broad push for civil rights across the South.
"Montgomery Bus Boycott with Rosa Parks, the desegregation crisis that happened in 1957 in Little Rock, we see Dr. King in Little Rock.”
While not confined to the South, the Equal Justice Initiative has recorded 44-hundred people killed by racially-motivated lynching in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. That number includes 492 recorded instances in Arkansas alone.
Till grew up just outside of Chicago, during a time of stark contrast in the lives of Black Americans between Northern and Southern states. In 1955, he convinced his mother to let him travel to Mississippi to visit his cousins.
While there, Till and a group of boys were outside of a grocery store when Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, exited. The story goes that Emmett Till whistled at her as she passed. Though the boys quickly left the area, it was just days later that Carolyn’s husband and his brother located them and demanded that Till come with them.
Throughout the night, Till was tortured and eventually killed. The men tied an industrial fan around his neck and sank his body in the Tallahatchie River. It was discovered days later by a fisherman.
In later interviews, Carolyn Bryant gave varying accounts of the events that happened at the store that day. She died in 2023.
The exhibit paints a picture of a boy who, lacking experience, did not understand the nuances of place, those between urban and rural spaces, North and South, and in the imaginary hierarchy of white supremacy.
A quote from Mamie Till-Mobley sums up her fears, saying, “How do you give a crash course in hate to a boy who has only known love?”
Benjamin Saulsberry, Museum Education Director at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, says by all accounts, Till was a happy, well-adjusted child.
"This was a child who loved baseball, and had friends, and was an average student, and all the things that, you know, kids/adolescents do.”
Saulsberry says the exhibit seeks to tell the full story of Till’s life, not just the horrific circumstances of his death. He says it is the contrast between the two, and the ripple effects that came after, must be taken together to understand the full story.
"Not having the murder or the tragedy over-emphasized, but understanding too, that his murder took place due to an environment that would not recognize the childhood of this person who happened to be a Black teenager. That kind of speaks to an environment that would allow for his dehumanization.”
Dehumanization is the underpinning of ‘Let the World See.’ While documented instances of child lynching are far fewer than those of adults, it was not unheard of in the decades leading up to the Civil Rights era.
Officials had sealed Till’s body in a casket and attached orders that it not be opened again prior to burial. However, when his mother received the casket, she defied those orders. Seeing her son, she made the extraordinary decision to display his remains in a glass-top casket, inviting the public to see.
People came to the wake in the thousands. The image was picked up by the press, meaning millions would now see the reality.
"That image I think, in a lot of ways, no longer gave way to apathy, from a larger collective standpoint. Because prior to that, of course, murders and other things had happened, and yet it's an entirely different conversation when you are seeing the remains of a child.”
The exhibit’s tour marks 70 years since Emmett Till was tortured and killed. The world since has been marked by progress, but also pockmarked by eras of systemic dehumanization. Saulsberry says the measure of racial reconciliation depends largely on the metrics.
“In some ways, I think, be it through laws and decisions made, we can see progress on a scale that, I think, matters when we think about overt examples of racism, systemically or otherwise. That being said, again from a point of objectivity, we still have a long way to go.”
And in the most recent times, Saulsberry says with the availability to share images of horror frequently and across the globe, it is important to recognize the context and message behind what we are confronted with.
"When we think about the intentionality that Mrs. Mamie Till expressed through giving consent to the image of her child, it was done with purpose. When we compare that today, I think that you have individuals of various ages doing the best they can to give access and give light to some of the things that so often don't get appropriately platformed.”
‘Let the World See’ is an exhibit that does not shy away from the harshest realities of the United States’ growth as a nation. Still, Mosaic Templars Director Key Fletcher says the exhibit is for all ages.
"We're so fortunate that the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and the Indianapolis Children's Museum worked together because they wanted to design something specifically that all people could experience. Because Emmett Till was 14 years old. So we want 14-year-olds, we want 10-year-olds to be able to come through the exhibit.”
The exhibit allows visitors to decide for themselves to what extent they wish to engage with the content, and provides ample warning before diving into the more disturbing aspects of the tragedy.
Saulsberry says the present moment has brought with it a desire by some to obfuscate history, to downplay the reality of our past and in doing so, reshape the present. He says the only way to combat this is to present the truth and to offer everyone a place within it.
"As folks who care about each other, and society at large, we believe it is vitally important to do the best we can in the face of that opposition, and in doing so we are called and committed to find ways to create spaces and tables, be it exhibits or other points of programming to remember the past and learn history. But to use history as a tool to be better day to day.”
The traveling installation, titled ‘Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley: Let the World See,’ is on loan from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and will run through January 2026.
