“Pictures bring up emotions, pictures bring up reactions, pictures bring up activism…” –Reena Evers Everette
Walking into the Culver Center for the Arts, the University of Riverside’s downtown art gallery, I passed an exhibition titled “Whatever Happened to Dyno-Woman: An Alternate History of an Afrofuturist Icon.” The drawings of a Black female comic-book hero jumped off the wall in bright oranges and red, welcoming me to what I feared would be another instance of Black trauma porn sensationalizing the horrors of America’s historical racial violence — an accompanying exhibition on Mamie and Emmett Till. Especially here in California, it is too easy to skew Black progressive ethos into images of lynching and brutality that exploit the suffering of human beings for the purpose of entertainment, shock value or profit. Yet this strange juxtaposition, the exuberance of the pictures of Dyno-Woman with her wild afro and upheld fist and the ideas and photographs of Mamie Till and her son, connected in surprising ways. Somehow the Culver Center for the Arts got it right.
The Culver Center is housed within a historic building that was originally constructed as a department store in the early 20th century. It hosts both the Sweeney Art Gallery and the California Museum of Photography, which contains one of the largest collections of photographic materials on the West Coast. From Nov. 4 to March 30, the Culver Center for the Arts is hosting a photography exhibition honoring the legacy of Mamie Till and the enduring consequences of her actions. The exhibit, “The Impact of Images: Mamie Till’s Courage from Tragedy,” takes viewers through the events preceding and following the 1955 lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till.
I am an Inland Empire poet; San Bernardino and Riverside, California, is my stomping ground. Yet I have a special connection to the Emmett Till story; in 2018, my small press, Jamii Publishing, published a book of poems that reimagined the lynching from the viewpoint of an imaginary witness who refused to back down. Ginger Galloway’s book, The Lynching of Sarah Elizabeth, told the story through poetry and song highlighting a woman’s perspective. Surprisingly, the photo exhibit does this as well. Mamie Till is firmly placed at the story’s core.
I loved being able to meet her and Emmett in photographs like this.
The exhibition opens with family photos: Mamie Till’s mother, Alma Spearman, a group of Emmett Till’s baby pictures, pictures of Emmett in a relaxed pose leaning against a door frame. One photograph in particular stood out to me: It showed Mamie with a huge smile, dressed up and seated at a table. I imagined Mamie out on the town, and it struck me that this was a woman of poise, sophistication and class. I loved being able to meet her and Emmett in photographs like this.
Another large photograph shows a roadside sign for Sumner, Mississippi, emblazoned with the town’s slogan, “A good place to raise a boy” — words that highlight the incredible irony of what happened in nearby Money, Mississippi, in 1955. (The trial was held at the courthouse in Sumner, about 30 miles from Money.) I couldn’t help thinking about how this infamous story is indelibly written into our consciousness — how I know the beats of what happened, almost everything that took place. The exhibition acknowledges this, but not in the way you might expect: The very large photograph at the climax of the story is just a sweeping image of a swamp, implying with delicate horror the unseen events that had to have taken place before Emmett’s brutalized body was ultimately found in the Tallahatchie River.
I fully expected to see the famous open-casket photograph of Emmett Till now, but instead, the next set of photos showed Mamie Till again. In one, she sits with her father and a police officer. In another, she is shown “falling to her knees” as the body of her son arrives at the Chicago train station; in another, we see Mamie again, her face in anguish at her son’s casket. The focus is always on Mamie, placing her, her love of her son and her unflinching activism at the center of the story. Mamie’s decision to hold an open-casket funeral, inviting the Black press corps to witness the brutality inflicted on her son, is given special consideration as a pivotal moment in history.
The exhibition also delves into the aftermath of the murder, displaying photos of the Civil Rights Movement and showcasing moments from the trial that highlight the deep-seated segregation of the time. The photo of Emmett Till’s uncle, Moses Wright, pointing to Emmett Till’s murderers Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam stands out. I could imagine the entire court gasping at this moment, because, as the display reminds us, “It was unheard of (for) a black person to openly accuse a white person at that time.” The photos of Bryant and Milam are also shown, both men hiding behind their children, and later, after they were acquitted, standing with their wives outside the courtroom — a sinister image that quietly, like the photograph of the swamp, conveys the horror of injustice in subtle ways that stayed with me long after I left.
The material in this exhibition is drawn from the Withers Collection, the Medgar Evers family and the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, among other sources. The photos are the work of Ernest Withers, who was not only successful in documenting the history of the case, but in making it known to the world at large. The exhibition features a reproduction of Ernest C. Withers’ booklet, Complete Photo Story of Till Murder Case. This 20-page booklet, sold for $1.00, was self-published by Ernest Withers in 1956. In this booklet, and only in this booklet, is the famous picture of Emmett Till’s brutalized face. It didn’t occur to me until I leafed through it that the emotions I felt as I walked through the exhibition, the depth of my connection to Mamie Till and Emmett Till and my understanding of the trial itself, had occurred without me even thinking about this image or feeling a need to see it. This is a testament to the exhibition’s own sensitivity and its understanding of perspective.
This is a testament to the exhibition’s own sensitivity and its understanding of perspective.
“The Impact of Images: Mamie Till’s Courage from Tragedy” is not just a reflection on the past; it reminds us of the power of photography and storytelling when seen through the eyes and from the perspective of the participants. This exhibition reveals how pictures have told stories in the past and continue to tell stories now. As we continue to grapple with racial injustice and systemic oppression, I can’t help but feel that this exhibit works because it highlights and acknowledges the importance of Ernest Withers’ efforts. From Rodney King to George Floyd, the act of asking the public to bear witness to what was done and what is still being done is often the catalyst that sparks activism. Yet how we ask the public to do this is so important. Rather than crafting our own modern narratives about the past, it is often more important to look back at the past through the eyes of the true superheroes, the ones who insisted on the story being told in first place.
As I left the exhibit, I passed by Dyno-Woman again. Yes, I thought: Our Black superheroes are alive and well, captured in images pulled out of time.
