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The Documentary: The ballads of Emmett Till

Emmett Till

10/02/2019 GMT

The ballads of Emmett Till

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The ballads of Emmett Till

Fourteen year-old Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. His death has resonated ever since

Fourteen year-old Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. His death has resonated ever since.

**Some listeners may find parts of this programme upsetting**

Emmett Till, fourteen and black, was put on the train from Chicago by his mother Mamie in August 1955. She got his corpse back, mutilated and stinking. Emmett had been beaten, shot and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for supposedly whistling at a white woman. His killers would forever escape justice.
 
What Mamie did next helped galvanise the Civil Rights Movement and make Emmett the sacrificial lamb of the movement. From the very first Till's death was both a call to political action and the subject of songs, poetry and prose.
 
Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and many more have been drawn to tell his tale - his is the never ending ballad of the first black life that mattered.
His disfigured image in the legendary photograph in Jet magazine is seared into the memories of generations of Black Americans. And now Till has returned to haunt America. Taken up by the mothers and fathers of the slain in the Black Lives Matter movement, the subject of new documentaries, a trio of forthcoming Hollywood films and a new FBI investigation as the search for justice continues. His coffin lies at the heart of the Washington's new museum of African American history - a secular shrine and symbol of the enduring pain of American racism.
 
Maria Margaronis travels through landscape and memory across Mississippi and Chicago to reveal the many layers of meaning and the many ways Emmett's story has been told and retold. These are the Ballads of Emmett Till.

(Photo: Emmett Till lying on his bed. Credit: Getty Images)

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