Why I am sharing this video

Mamie Till is one of the bravest women I've have ever studied.

If you don’t know the story of Emmitt Till, he was a 14 year old African American from Chicago. In 1955 he visited his cousins in Mississippi for the summer. Emmett didn’t know the ways or the south back then and made a flirtatious remark to a white woman as a 14 year old might. It is widely reported it was a "wolf whistle." I'm the historian, it was "Hey, baby.". He was lynched. He was shot. He was beaten. He was dumped in the river with a cotton gin fan around his neck. When the body was returned to Chicago, the casket had been nailed shut. His mother, Mamie, had to force them to open it. She wanted to see her boy. As a mother I cannot begin to imagine the horror she felt. So Mamie wanted people to see what they did to her son. She wanted them to look at it. See what lynching looked like. See what was happening to black people through out the south with no repercussions for the assailants. She had an open casket funeral for her son. Jet Magazine took photos. Look them up if you like, I have problems looking at them myself. It’s one of those things you can still see when you close your eyes. But those photos made for a turn in consciousness amongst northern blacks and some white people. It was a tipping point for the civil rights movement.

Now, is this to say I expect to be the catalyst for such a movement? Hell no. But I hope that my story and my video of my body along with the voices of other women who have been through that and look at it and go “yes, that is what that looks like, pay attention!” I hope that can make a change in the world. Sometimes it’s one voice. One act of bravery. One picture that speaks a those thousand words that become a tipping point for change. Or I’m just telling myself that to make myself feel better. Who knows at this point.