Chicago Exhibition Imagines Life Emmett Till Never Lived — SkimNews
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- Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr co-curated "If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground" at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, running until December 19, framing the show as a "creative monument" to a life cut short.
- The exhibition presents an imagined photo library of the life Till never lived, drawing on photographers ranging from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks and Carrie Mae Weems to Till's cousin Lance Omar Thurman.
- Illinois designated July 25 as Emmett Till Day in the months leading up to the opening, while Patrick Weems's Emmett Till Interpretive Center purchased the barn where Till was murdered with plans to convert it into a site of remembrance.
- Mamie Till-Mobley held an open-casket funeral for nearly 100,000 attendees at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ on September 4, 1955, hiring photographer David Jackson to document her son's body for Jet magazine — a moment Lewis calls "prophetic" in understanding witnessing as critical to American democracy.
- Hank Willis Thomas selected Dawoud Bey's portrait of Barack Obama — a Black man gazing directly into the camera — as a stand-in for "the possibilities that could have come to fruition in Till's life if he had the opportunity to grow old."
- Notable contributors including Chelsea Clinton, Ava DuVernay, Henry Louis Gates Jr and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley each chose images and wrote reflections for the accompanying book, which Lewis structured around a "democratic ethos" that elevated message over artist stature.
Why it matters: Lewis frames the exhibition as an intervention against 71 years of resistance to honoring Till — markers commemorating him have been shot at, stolen and used as white supremacist recruiting sites. By centering a Till who lived rather than only a Till who died, the show attempts to shift public memory from victimhood to possibility, with co-curator Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr calling it a tribute to "the many Emmett Tills today."
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