AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, with Juan González in Chicago.

What if Emmitt Till had lived? What if he had safely boarded the train back home to Chicago? More than 70 years after the kidnapping, torture and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, a major new photography exhibit and companion book asks those questions by imagining not only the life young Emmett lost, but the decades he was denied. This is the exhibit’s curator, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis.

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS: What if Emmett Till lived? What if he had returned home still a child, alive and free? What would that life have required of us all? These questions invite a reckoning with the past and a probing investigation of the current state of American life.

This exhibition, this publication and the invitation together offer a collective arena to consider how freedom has been secured on American ground. It is a creative monument to Emmett Till’s unlived life. It lets us picture what could have come, what should have come. It lets us imagine it, what it wrought, and what it signals about the work that remains.

AMY GOODMAN: If Emmett Till had lived, he would have turned 85 years old on July 25th, the day the Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has declared Emmett Till Day. But Till was murdered at the age of 14 on August 28th, 1955, dragged from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman. They beat, tortured and shot Till, tied a heavy cotton gin fan to him with barbed wire, threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. His body was discovered several days later.

Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett Till’s mother, had his body returned to Chicago for burial. She insisted on an open casket so the world could see the brutality of bigotry and racism. Jet magazine and other publications carried photos of Emmett Till’s beaten, distended face in his coffin, shocking the world and galvanizing the civil rights movement.

Speaking to Democracy Now! in 2000, Mamie Till-Mobley reflected on the painful moment she learned about her son’s murder.

MAMIE TILL-MOBLEY: When we knew that Emmett was dead, our first action — we couldn’t take time to cry. As I announced to the family what was happening, of course there were screams. People were hitting the floor, and the hysteria was setting in. And I remember standing, announcing that “We don’t have time to cry now, we’ve got to do something. I don’t know what to do, and you’ve got to help me come to make some decisions.”

AMY GOODMAN: The voice of Mamie Till-Mobley on Democracy Now! a quarter of a century ago. To see the whole interview, you can go to democracynow.org.

The new exhibit, “If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground,” opens September 10th at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Drawing from the museum’s permanent collection, it invites visitors to imagine the decades Emmett Till never lived, the neighborhoods he might have walked, the civil rights struggles he might have witnessed, the family he might have built, the ordinary moments of joy he never had the chance to experience.

It comes as the Trump administration has escalated attacks on DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — moved to censor how U.S. history is taught and presented, and targeted museums and cultural institutions over installations and programs reckoning with racism and the nation’s past.

For more, we’re joined by Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, cultural historian who collaborated with Emmett Till’s cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., the last living witness to see Emmett, to curate the exhibition and the accompanying standalone publication, the book If Emmett Till Lived: A Creative Monument. Professor Lewis is founder of the Vision & Justice Initiative and currently the John L. Loeb associate professor of humanities and associate professor of African American studies at Harvard University.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us.

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS: It’s an honor to be with you. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: What a journey you have been on and you’re taking us all on. You have just returned from being with Emmett’s cousin, the last — one of the last people, except for his murderers, to see him alive. You went to Mississippi. You came back to Chicago. Can you talk about this journey and what inspired this remarkable book that’s going to come out soon, If Emmett Till Lived?

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS: Yes. Again, it’s an honor to be with you and to know that Mamie Till-Mobley also spoke with you, who inspired this entire journey for me.

Have we made good on the sacrifice of Emmett Till’s life? This is the question I asked myself when I went to Mississippi and saw for myself the evidence of the resistance to honoring his life, even 70 years later — the bullet shot marker at the Tallahatchie River site, Graball Landing, for example, being one. And I asked myself: What more could I do? We all have a role to play, and asked myself if we have found — if we need new ways to see anew, to see his life anew.

This exhibition was inspired by Mamie Till-Mobley’s prophetic act. She challenged us to understand the power of witnessing in American democracy. She said, as you know, “Let the world see what they’ve done to my son.” In that moment, she was living out an idea that so many before her understood — Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois — that we would need the power of the image to understand the unspeakable in American democracy.

But the question I asked myself is: What’s required today? Have we seen so many images of injustice that we might be numb to it? And so, through the extraordinary collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, found an arena, a way to invite people in to understand his humanity, all of our humanity, and resulted in this exhibition that opens in September. It’s culled from the collection approximately 70 photographers deliberately to rhyme with the nearly 70 years that have passed, and really is joining so many others in this moment, from the National Trust, that is doing extraordinary work to renovate Roberts Temple, to the state of Illinois, where Governor Pritzker announced that we would have an Emmett Till Day, to really ask this question: If Emmett Till lived, what would that life have looked like for us all? Right? And so, it brings everyone in to this conversation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sarah Lewis, I wanted to ask you — you mentioned the bulletproof marker at Graball Landing in Mississippi. I’m not sure that most of our audience is aware of its history. Could you talk about that and the resistance to it?

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS: Yes. Thank you. The Emmett Till Interpretive Center began to honor the site where his body is thought to have been brought out of the Tallahatchie River, in 2008. That first marker was shot, defaced with acid and thrown into the Tallahatchie River shortly after it was erected, 35 days, I believe, after it was erected. The second marker was shot 317 times. And the third marker had the same fate. One of the markers is in the Smithsonian today. The fourth marker, which was erected recently, is deliberately bulletproof, weighs 500 pounds and is fronted with abrasion-resistant acrylic to protect it from these acts of violence.

When I saw the reporting on this in 2019, it was because a group of students at University of Mississippi had proudly displayed themselves having shot the marker on their social media page, and I was stunned. I needed to see for myself the site, the context, to understand the act itself. Was it a highway shooting? How premeditated was this? And saw that that road to Graball Landing makes you pay for every inch. You have to know where you’re going. The gravel on the ground forced my car to slow down to such a speed that you would have to be conscious of where you were. This is a sacred site.

What does it mean that, over 70 years later, we still cannot let his body rest? The bullet shots on each marker, to me, indicate a symbol of why bravery is required in American democracy today. The acts of resistance give you a sense of the urgency to understand the significance of Governor Pritzker’s act, of the Roberts Temple renovation, of the decision and the announcement by President Joe Biden in 2023 that there would be a tri-site monument to Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till. Unless you understand the resistance, the bulletproof marker being, I think, the most vivid one, you don’t understand the significance of these acts, of these monuments, of these markers. So, that’s a —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering — I’m wondering if you could put this in context to today. Last year, CBS ran a piece titled “National monument honoring Emmett Till at risk of removal due to Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives, budget cuts.” Your response?

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS: Well, I don’t believe that that — that the Smithsonian ever removed anything, from what I understand. But what it does indicate, what this cultural moment indicates, is the significance of markers and monuments for American democracy. One of the hidden forces in American democracy is the power of culture, right? This is — we’re really today asking ourselves: What does truth and reconciliation require? It requires witnessing. Again, this is what Mamie Till-Mobley was so prophetic in understanding. It requires that we actually see our history. And if we ignore the role that museums play, that displays play, that markers and symbols and monuments play, we’re missing how we’ve actually constructed and assembled our democracy.

We also are in need of a new assembly today in American democracy. And that’s being constituted by lawyers like Bryan Stevenson and Sherrilyn Ifill, who understand the importance of culture for justice today, Bryan Stevenson creating the legacy sites in Montgomery to honor the over 4,000 lynched men, women and children, whose lives have not been acknowledged or honored, and dedicated his nonexistent free time to creating a memorial complex. Sherilyn Ifill with her new 14th Amendment Center is seeing culture as a pillar for democracy. Why? Because art really is one of the critical modes of creating an appeal to the moral imagination. What do you do in the face of unjust law? You have to appeal to the conscience. And the power of the artist is to do precisely that. We see this with Gordon Parks. You see this with Lewis Hine, whose work transformed labor movements. You see this with so many of the artists who are also in the exhibition itself.

AMY GOODMAN: And I want to talk about that exhibition and the book. You have Lonnie Bunch — What If Emmet Till Lived? — quoting from Mamie Till-Mobley, after a moving, hourslong conversation with her. He said, “She had carried the burden of Emmett’s memory for nearly 50 years, and it was time historians like myself share that burden. She ended our conversation by saying that to her, Emmett was crucified on the cross of racial hatred and injustice.” Lonnie Bunch, head now of the Smithsonian, under so much enormous pressure. I want to go to the cover of this book, this astounding cover, If Emmett Till Lived. Tell us about the photograph and, overall, the photographs you chose.

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS: Thank you. Well, this, I’m not afraid to say, was inspired by what I can only describe as divination. I went through 18,000 photographs in the museum’s collection and asked myself: What would Emmett Till want for the unfurling of his life? And then asked a set of individuals, including Lonnie Bunch, Ava DuVernay, many others, Alicia Garza — founded the Black Lives Matter movement — to select images, as well, to walk alongside Reverend Wheeler Parker and Mamie Till-Mobley.

But this photograph by Stephen Marc that’s on the cover, taken in 1988, struck me as an emblem for the entire project. It is not constructed. It is a real-life event that he witnessed on a beach in Chicago, a father tossing his young boy up in the air. And he saw it, and he asked — he had one frame left in his camera, film, of course — if he could do it again. And he did, and he captured the exact moment he wanted.

I asked myself as I looked at it: Which one is Emmett Till? It could be, of course, the young boy, suspended, secure, almost impossibly confident in that state of this ascent. But it should also be able to be the father. We should also be able to see Emmett Till as that father. And it prompted me to think of the life denied. That tilted horizon line, I think, speaks to the work we need to do to write our foundation and secure American ground so that all are secure on it. Stephen Marc, this extraordinary photographer, is one of many in the show. He happens to be a relative of Dr. Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress. But this photograph becomes an emblem for the central question, “What if Emmett Till lived?” and speaks to, I think, the work we need to tilt that horizon line, to straighten our ground.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ll be — you were, on Friday, with Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. Emmett’s cousin, next-door neighbor, went with him to Money, Mississippi, was with him the night the white men, the mob, came and ultimately lynched him, and he ended up in the bottom of the Tallahatchie River. You were at Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till’s grave. Describe that journey.

SARAH ELIZABETH LEWIS: If every American took the journey that Emmett Till walked to go to Mississippi, and that his body went through to meet his end, we would have the truth and reconciliation we need in this democracy. It has been a profound time. What an honor to be able to co-curate the show with Reverend Wheeler Parker, who has such an extraordinarily open heart, has seen the worst, has forgiven all. It has been really unspeakable.

We recently went to Mississippi on what is his final journey to the ground where Emmett Till was last free and then died. We went to every site pertaining to that, his time there. Thankfully, we did photograph and film it, because it’s impossible to describe, so hopefully you’ll be able to see here, for example, an image of us at the barn, the site that is now in the hands of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. It was the first time that he met the owner of the barn, who held it for over 30 years, and the first time that they met. And you can see in my face the tension and the nervousness about that meeting. It is the equivalent, this barn, of if — if you were to make an analogy to the Holocaust, the oven, in effect. This is our symbol, right? And there, Emmett Till was tortured and lynched. Willie Reed heard those sounds.

What was it like for Reverend Parker? I have to wonder. He described it to me, but we’ll never fully know. He thought of what his best friend was going through, but he also describes this fundamental fact that Emmett Till did not end in the casket. His life lived on with all that came in its wake. So, he has an understanding of the sort of redemption that did transpire for the country. But it was painful to watch him there.

It was inspiring to see, in Chicago and in Mississippi, too, how his testimony inspires. You know, when you’re in his presence and you hear him think through the journey of the 70 years that have happened since, when you hear him describe that he was sent out on “the first thing smoking,” as he says, back to Chicago after Emmett Till was kidnapped, you realize that Emmett Till, you know, is so many of us. Emmett Till could have been Reverend Parker. He knows that. He lives with that survivor’s guilt, as he describes it, and has turned the intensity of that, that heat, into light to illuminate what we need to understand about ourselves in this democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: If Emmett Till Lived is the new book and the photo exhibition at Columbia College that opens on September 10th. And that date that he died, August 28th, also the date, most people don’t realize, that Dr. Martin Luther King held that rally on the Mall, “I Have a Dream,” August 28th, 1963. It was eight years later. Mamie Till-Mobley saying she wanted that casket open for the wake and the funeral, for the world to see the ravages of racism, the brutality of bigotry. Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, thank you so much for being with us, cultural historian who collaborated with Emmett’s cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., the last living witness to see Emmett. They’ve curated the forthcoming exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, opening September 10th, the exhibit titled and the new book titled If Emmett Till Lived. We will cover all that transpires. Coming up — and I look forward to being with you, Professor Lewis, on August 11th in Edinburgh, along with Bryan Stevenson and Ken Burns and Nicky Benedetti and Wynton Marsalis, for an amazing event talking about all these issues and more.

Coming up, the life and legacy of the late historian and activist Johanna Fernández. Juan González remembers. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Pa’lante” performed by Alynda Segarra and Hurray for the Riff Raff at Democracy Now!’s 30th anniversary in Riverside Church in March.