Tag: Emmett Till

Memorabilia

noun

  • objects or materials that are collected because they are related to a particular event, person, etc.

Source:http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/memorabilia

I came across this word from a link we was going over in class (click here for link). This word can be found in the sentence “Of all the civil rights memorabilia I’ve collected over the years, the Emmett Till material upset my kids the most”. My first impression of this word was that it had something to do with memories. Technically this word is related to memories but more towards a particular range of memories. From learning what memorabilia meant, this sentence is saying the Emmett Till memorabilia was upsetting to the author’s kids since the kids were around Emmett Till age. The case of Emmett Till was a tragedy about a fourteen year old boy who was lynched because he whistled at a white girl.

Contemporary

adjective

  • : happening or beginning now or in recent times

  • : existing or happening in the same time period : from the same time period

Source:http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contemporary

I came across this word in an article my fellow peer posted in response to the article about Emmett Till (click here for the link). It can be found in the sentence “Chris Metress, the editor of “The Lynching of Emmett Till,” a book that includes contemporary news accounts of the killing and trial”. I thought this word meant in a short amount of time. Contemporary to me felt like a word I would know since I’ve heard it a lot of times but I was wrong. From learning what contemporary means, it now makes sense that the book The Lynching of Emmett Till is talking about today’s news about the tragedy that happened in the past.

Powerful photographs–continued

For our last class, we read Nora Ephron’s “The Boston Photographs” and examined the images her essay refers to. For our next class, we will consider the photographs published in Jet magazine that depict the brutalization of Emmett Till.

One collector of civil rights memorabilia has provided an archive of the various issues of Jet magazine relevant to this discussion. Before you click through to view the images, please brace yourselves–these are extremely disturbing images.

You might also look at this compilation of newspaper articles following Emmett Till’s murder. At the bottom of the page, you can download the FBI report, which includes materials from the time of the incident and more recent reporting.

Taking a step back, the Wikipedia page could be a good place to get started to understand the events that led up to and that followed Till’s murder.

Reply here with a comment about the choice to publish these photographs. You might write about what motivated the choice, or even what Ephron would say based on what she wrote in “The Boston Photographs,” or how these images matter today in relation to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Are there other sources you consulted that were helpful for you? Please share them with us in your comment.

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