Civil Rights Memorial Center to unveil Emmett Till traveling exhibit

A traveling exhibit on the life and murder of Emmett Till will be on display in Montgomery from April-August – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WAKA) – The Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery will host a traveling exhibit in memory of Emmett Till.

The exhibit, called “Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley: Let the World See” opens to the public tomorrow.

Till was a Black teenager from Chicago, whose abduction, torture and killing in Mississippi in 1955 helped launch the Civil Rights Movement, in the same year that the arrest of Rosa Parks in Montgomery started the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

FILE – An undated portrait of Emmett Louis Till, a black 14 year old Chicago boy, whose weighted down body was found in the Tallahatchie River near the Delta community of Money, Mississippi, August 31, 1955. (AP Photo, File)

His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, put her son Emmett on a train to her native Mississippi, where he was to spend time with his uncle and his cousins. In the overnight hours of Aug. 28, 1955, Emmett was taken from his uncle’s home at gunpoint by two  white men who accused him of flirting with one of their wives. Three days later, a fisherman on the Tallahatchie River discovered his body.

Organizers call the exhibit an interactive time-traveling, immersive experience.

Some of its features include:

• Eyewitness Account: An interactive display that features a firsthand account of Emmett Till’s kidnapping, told through a rotary telephone audio player.
• Emmett Till Funeral: Another interactive display that scrolls through a selection of photographs capturing the moment Emmett Till’s body arrived home for his burial.
• Courtroom Sketchpad: An interactive tool that reenacts courtroom sketches and explains how the Emmett Till murder trial unfolded.

The exhibit will be on display until August. Tickets to the Civil Rights Memorial Center are $5 for ages 18 and older and $2 for ages 8-17; children ages 7 and younger get free admission. It is located at 400 Washington Avenue.