Shadows of Emmett Till

An exceptional publication, both alarming and poignant, that sheds light
on unresolved racial injustices in the time of Black Lives Matter

The Mississippi Delta has been called The Most Southern Place on Earth, a region of layered histories that collide with each other on a daily basis. It’s a place that defines America and Americans like no other part of the country - a culture entwined with slavery, poverty, and political and economic oppression. It is the land that gave birth to the creative genius of Muddy Waters and B.B. King, and to the horror of the Civil Rights-era murder of young Emmett Till.

Shadows of Emmett Till seeks to probe that complex past: picturing the energy of a landscape that has bred both hatred and creativity, interrogating the whiteness that has always held power in its grip in a place that is predominantly Black, and observing the many ways the shadow of Till’s murder still hangs over the Delta. This is work that breathes the Delta air and seeks to frame the region and its people in a 21st-century context, at a time when white America may be starting to finally come to terms with the sins of its past. It guides the viewer in an exploration of what the Delta was and what it now is.

Along the way,
one can see the past spill into the present punctuated with troubling parallels to George Floyd and so many others.