The Till Case: A Picture of Torment

Mamie Till Mobley — whose son Emmett Till was savagely murdered in Mississippi almost 50 years ago — knew something about respect for victims, fighting for human rights, and the power of photographs.

She knew when she saw her 14-year-old son’s battered, bloated, unrecognizable face that honoring those who have suffered doesn’t always mean hiding the visual evidence of torment.

In 1955, Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was murdered, mutilated and dumped in a river after apparently flirting with a white woman while he was visiting relatives in Mississippi. Mobley, who died last year, chose to have an open casket funeral for her son. She allowed photographs to be taken of Till’s disfigured body, which lay below a snapshot of the smiling teenager attached to the inside lid of his casket.

The two men who were tried and acquitted for Till’s murder later admitted to the killing. This week the Justice Department reopened the case, acknowledging evidence that other accomplices to Till’s murder may still be alive.

As editors face difficult choices about how much stark brutality to show in images coming from Iraq, Till’s and Mobley’s story reminds us that softening the truth isn’t necessarily respectful to those in pain.

In reporting the reopening of the case, Associated Press referred today to the images of Till: “Pictures of the battered body shocked the world, and the case became an early spark for the civil rights movement.”

In truth, only the African American press chose to run the photographs of Till’s corpse in 1955. And, as with the images of American soldiers taunting Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the photographs didn’t necessarily shock or surprise every individual who saw them.

Yet the pictures of Emmett Till’s battered face did become a symbol, not just of the brutality of racial bigotry, but also of the need to take a look at who we are and what we condone.

Mamie Till Mobley made a courageous decision to show her dead son’s face to the world, and the editors who used the photographs did so not to sensationalize her pain but to make a statement about human rights. Hiding the visual evidence of Till’s murder, Mobley’s pain, and violent opposition to civil rights would have been disrespectful to those who suffered most from Till’s death.