Emmett Till case expert can speak on national monument

LAWRENCE — One of the nation’s leading experts on the commemoration of the 1955 case that galvanized the Civil Rights Movement is available to comment on the latest and most enduring memorial effort – the dedication Tuesday of a national monument that spans both the Mississippi spot where young Emmett Till was lynched and the Chicago church where his mother’s courage brought the case to international attention.

Dave Tell, a University of Kansas professor of communication studies, said the declaration of the sites as a National Park Service monument “feels like a recognition of what the family and the not-for-profit group have been saying for a long time: that the Till story is a vital part of American history.”

On Monday, Tell was part of a group driving Till’s only surviving cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker, from Chicago to Washington for the ceremony. 

Tell has been involved in a number of previous commemorative efforts in and around the place where Chicago native Till was murdered — near the town of Money, Mississippi. Tell is the author of the 2019 book "Remembering Emmett Till” (University of Chicago Press).

He has consulted with the grassroots group the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, which first erected roadside markers at various Mississippi Delta sites associated with the murder. Repeated vandalism of the signs — particularly at the site where Till’s tortured body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River — by gunshots brought echoes of the racism that killed the 14-year-old boy to the nation’s attention in the 21st century. Tell wrote the text on the latest, bulletproof marker.

Tell has also consulted with the memorial group on its implementation of grants that preserved and interpreted the Tallahatchie County courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where the killers were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury in 1955. He also helped conceive and execute a website that directs Delta visitors to various sites associated with the case.

He has also consulted on a number of museum exhibitions about the case, including one that appeared in 2021 at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Tell said the so-called River Site (aka Graball Landing), the Sumner Courthouse and the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago – where photos of Till’s open-casket funeral revealed the depth of racist brutality — will become National Park property when President Joe Biden signs the order Tuesday. That means any further vandalism of them will be a federal crime.

“It’s important, given the history of vandalism at the site,” Tell said. “The Parks department will become the custodian of the story.”

To interview Tell about the advent of the national monument, contact Rick Hellman, KU News Service public affairs officer, at 913-620-8786 or rick_hellman@ku.edu.

Image: Dave Tell (right) with the late Simeon Wright in front of the former Bryant’s Grocery in Money, Mississippi, in August 2014. Wright, who died in 2017, was Emmett Till’s cousin and was an eyewitness to tevents at the store. Credit: Courtesy of Dave Tell.