    
Aurora
Regular Poster
Username: Aurora
Post Number: 35
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - 02:00 pm: | 
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Museum Honors Emmett Till in Mississippi
Sep 20, 4:27 AM EDT
GLENDORA, Miss. (AP) -- Photographs that captured a mother's grief and Emmett Till's mutilated body were on display as this tiny Mississippi Delta town opened a museum honoring the slain black teenager whose death was pivotal in the civil rights movement.
Among the items on display are family snapshots and a picture of Till's mutilated body that stunned the nation after the 14-year-old Chicago boy was brutally murdered in 1955, allegedly in retaliation for whistling at a white woman.
"I want the country to see this moment as an historic event of how far we have come in the civil rights movement and to open people's eyes to the many other injustices that have happened in other places besides the Delta," said Till's cousin, Priscilla Sterling.
The town converted a cotton gin into the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, which includes oral histories, an audio-visual archive and a cotton gin fan like the one used to weigh down Till's body after it was dumped in the Tallahatchie River.
Two white men were acquitted in Till's case by an all-white jury. The two men later confessed in an interview with Look magazine.
The FBI reopended the case in 2004 but decided in March not to press charges. The case was turned over to District Attorney Joyce Chiles for possible state charges. She did not return a call seeking comment.
The boy's case has never been forgotten in more then half a century.
The National Conference of Black Mayors commissioned the Till center as a model of revitalization for other small towns.
The museum also has a space dedicated to Glendora native and legendary blues harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson.
A technological center will be opened at the site in a collaboration with Mississippi Valley State University. |
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