Renown producer Shonda Rhimes has donated $1.5 million to the Emmett Till Interpretive Center to help purchase the Mississippi barn where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955.
On Nov. 24, which would have been the 104th birthday of Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center announced that it had acquired the barn. “We did not save this place to dwell in grief. We saved it so that truth could keep shaping,” the Center wrote in a press release.
By 2030, the 75th anniversary of Emmett Till’s lynching, “the barn plans to open as a part of a larger public memorial — a place of truth, creativity, and conscience. Visitors will come not to look at tragedy, but to confront their own role in the ongoing work of democracy,” according to a Letter from the center.
“That faith still calls to us,” Rhimes added. “The barn carries her same charge: to help the world see.”
Rhimes, told Good Morning America host Robin Roberts in 2023, “My hope is that this story never gets lost.”
Emmett Till
According to Super Talk FM, nearly 60 years ago, Emmett was staying with relatives in the small town of Money when he was accused of whistling at Carolyn Bryant Donham, a white woman. After being informed of Emmett’s purported actions, Donham’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, beat and tortured the teen. He died from a gunshot to the head.
Mamie Till insisted on an open casket on Sept. 6, 1955, “to let the world see what they did to my son.” Thousands came to view Emmett’s body, many weeping, fainting, or left forever changed after viewing his mutilated body.
Donham claimed during a testimony that Emmett grabbed her hand and waist and propositioned her, saying he had been with “White women before.”
However, Duke University senior research scholar Timothy Tyson wrote that in 2007, she admitted she had lied about Till’s alleged advances. In The Blood of Emmett Till, Tyson recounts her saying, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
Emmett’s death fueled a civil rights movement that has lasted for decades, with his renewed case being closed once again in December 2021, leaving Donham free of any charges.
Donham, who died in 2023, later became central to the reassessment of the case.