The story of Emmett Till, in part, represents a fight against erasure and mistruths. His killers tried to hide his body; he was found. People implored his mother not to reveal his brutalized body at the funeral; she opened the casket and Jet published some of American history’s most influential photographs. His suffering was blamed on harassment directed at a white woman; she recently confessed this was a lie.
The fight against erasure continued this week. As reported by The Clarion-Ledger, vandals defaced and nearly scraped clean a sign memorializing Till on Mississippi’s Freedom Trail. The marker was first placed outside Bryant’s Grocery in Money, Mississippi, in 2011—56 years after Till’s death. As the Ledger notes, targeting Till memorials is a statewide trend. “KKK” was painted on the Emmett Till Memorial Highway marker in 2006; last year, someone riddled another Till marker with bullet holes.
But Till’s story still resonates, his image an immovable presence in the memory of Black America. As Reena Evers-Everette—the daughter of slain activist Medgar Evers—once said about seeing the funeral photos as a teenager, “I knew it could have been me. I knew it could have been my cousin, my best friend, my brother, my father.”
And as some kids proved in Mississippi this week, the fight to keep telling Till’s story offers a teachable moment. For students, it speaks to the importance of preserving—and questioning—history. For educators, it speaks to the role youth can play in passing it on.
“I knew it could have been me. I knew it could have been my cousin, my best friend, my brother, my father.”
A group of teens from a St. Louis, Missouri-based program called Cultural Leadership discovered the vandalized marker during a tour of civil rights landmarks. Rather than merely report the damage, they took remembrance into their own hands, covering the blank spaces with drawings and notes.
Making personal connections to Till, the students interacted with history, illustrating their understanding through an act of civic engagement and standing up to hate. In their notes, they expressed gratitude and an awareness of the context and import surrounding Till’s death: “It’s not who killed him, it’s what killed him.” “His death sparked a movement.” “Emmett Till’s death brought unity and courage.”
Such a history lesson with present-day action should enliven and inspire educators—the ultimate rebuttal to “Why does this matter now?” The civil rights movement is often taught in the past tense. This Cultural Leadership lesson, taught in the torch-has-been-passed tense, proves the power of adults nurturing youth voices and inspiring action.
As New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a remarkable speech about removing Confederate monuments, what we choose to remember and etch in stone matters. “There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it,” he said. “For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.”
It’s a mentality that inspired the Mississippi Freedom Trail, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial, the Equal Justice Initiative’s Lynching in America project, and countless, ongoing efforts to honor the nation’s social justice change makers with the same reverence bestowed to the (white) founding fathers.
Young people can and should be a part of that quest, and educators should facilitate this relationship between past and present. A simple tour can remind students—and adults—of history’s martyrs, change agents and consequences.
But action—action can make them come alive.
Collins is a staff writer for Teaching Tolerance.
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