. Mississippi Goddam
. Mississippi Goddam
Emmett Till’s Photographs and Geographic Identity
In August 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, an African American, was lynched to death by two white men in Mississippi after he wolf whistled at a white woman. The story of Till’s lynching, along with the gruesome photographs of his terribly bloated corpse and mangled face, attracted national attention. This chapter examines the story of Emmett Till and how his murder subverts the whole dynamic of lynching and lynching photography. It analyzes the dynamics of lynching by focusing on Till’s lynched black body that was displayed publicly by blacks against the wishes of the white lynchers. It argues that the images of a propertied and domesticated Till show him to be part of a community, in stark contrast to the usual lynching photo. It also considers how traumatic events are projected onto the landscape, whereby human deeds are metaphorically blended into the very geography of the land. Finally, it comments on how scholars ignore the life Till lived in Chicago before he perished in Mississippi.
Keywords: lynching, Emmett Till, Mississippi, photographs, murder, black body, blacks, images, Chicago, geography
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