DREW, Miss.—It was only 70 years ago. A green and white ‘55 Chevrolet pickup truck trudged across a dark, gravel road, carrying a young Black boy and his two white captors to a barn in Drew, Mississippi.
It was only 70 years ago. The walls of the old, tattered barn bore witness as the white men battered the body and broke the bones of a young Black boy who had the audacity to live, to exist in a society hell-bent on his demise.
It was only 70 years ago. The barn floor held the body of the 14-year-old Black child as he cried out for his mother under the weight of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant’s hateful hands. A bullet blasted out of a pistol into the young Black body that had already endured a brutal beating. After two hours of torture for the sin of allegedly whistling at Bryant’s white wife at a grocery store in Money, Miss., Emmett Louis Till died in the barn. His death, and Bryant and Milam’s acquittal by an all-white jury, would galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.
Now, an organization devoted to preserving the legacy and memory of Till has taken ownership of the barn and plans to open it as a public memorial by 2030. The Emmett Till Interpretive Center announced in an open letter that the organization had purchased the building from Jeff Andrews, a white dentist who purchased the property in the 1990s.
The organization purchased the barn with a $1.5 million donation from TV producer Shonda Rhimes, the woman behind popular shows like “Scandal,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “How to Get Away With Murder” and “Bridgerton.”
“This is the site where the worst of humanity showed up and lynched a 14-year-old child. The aftermath of that terrible night led to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement,” Patrick Weems, the executive director and co-founder of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, told the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 24. “This is ground zero of the modern Civil Rights Movement at this site.”
In 2021, Wright Thompson, a Clarksdale native, wrote “His Name was Emmett Till,” an article about the murder of Till and the work of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, in The Atlantic. TV producer Shonda Rhimes read this piece and got in touch with the head of her foundation.
On Dec. 18, 2023, Rhimes announced on “Good Morning America” that she would be making a donation to the Emmett Till Interpretive Center to purchase the barn and make it a site for remembrance.
Till, who lived with his mother in Chicago, had been visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was murdered. His body wouldn’t be recovered until three days later, when two boys who were fishing found it in the Tallahatchie River.
The murder stunned the world after Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, decided to have an open casket funeral to show the world her child’s swollen, disfigured body and the brutality of white supremacy.
“Seventy years ago, Mamie Till said, ‘Let them see.’ And today, with the preservation of the barn by the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, the world will see,” Rhimes said in a statement that the Emmett Till Interpretive Center provided to the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 24. “The barn where Emmett Till, a child, was tortured and killed will now be saved and protected by the Emmett Till Interpretive Center.”
While the ETIC is still figuring out how the barn will be used, Weems said he is certain that the main focus of the space will be to preserve Till’s life and legacy.
“It’s going to be a reverent sacred site. That’s the thing that we absolutely know. We hope to include as many voices in that process on how to take something where something so awful took place and turn it into a place with high reverence,” Weems told the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 24.
Gloria Dickerson, founder of the We2gether Creating Change organization and a Sunflower County Supervisor, said she feels that the purchase of the barn will rightfully recognize Sunflower County’s role in the history of Till’s murder while educating the community. The retelling of Till’s death often focuses on Money in Leflore County, the site of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market and of Till’s abduction, and Tallahatchie County, where his body was found at Graball Landing.
“Originally, Sunflower County had been left out of the story as to where Emmett Till was even murdered, so with the purchase of this barn, we can bring more attention to it,” Dickerson told the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 24. “We can also educate our community about what happened here and how it was the spark of the Civil Rights Movement.”