The Power of Looking, from Emmett Till to Philando Castile

On September 2, 1955, a metal casket containing Emmett Till’s bloated and broken body arrived in Chicago. Less than two weeks before, Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy, had travelled down to Mississippi to visit relatives, a summer sojourn made by many children of the Great Migration. On August 24th, Till, along with some of his cousins and friends, had stopped in at Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, where Till allegedly spoke to Carolyn Bryant, a twenty-one-year-old white woman, who was working behind the store’s counter.

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