Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Now, a new app honors his memory
JACKSON, Miss. – Sixty-four years after the brutal murder of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta, a Florida State University professor has launched a new app to preserve his memory.
Davis Houck, a professor in the College of Communication and Information at the university, recently launched the Emmett Till Memory Project app and an accompanying website which documents 18 locations linked with Till’s murder.
“Emmett was largely forgotten from 1956 to 1986, but his importance has multiplied exponentially in the past 30 years, most notably with the creation of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission in Tallahatchie County,” Houck said in a Tallahassee Democrat article from Florida State's communications office.
The app comes in the wake of controversy surrounding the site where the 14-year-old's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in August 1955. Vandals have destroyed several markers and signs near the site over the years, the most recent incident coming when a photo of three white University of Mississippi students posing with guns in front of a bullet-riddled marker surfaced in July.
"Our app is designed to tell his story in ways that the existing historical markers cannot. It’s out of reach to would-be vandals,” Houck said.
Till, who was black, was abducted Aug. 28, 1955, three days after Carolyn Bryant Donham, a white 21-year-old shopkeeper in the town of Money, Mississippi, said Till grabbed and wolf-whistled at her.
The battered body of Till was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River. The viciousness of the killing rocked the nation, and the woman's then-husband and another man were charged with murder. Both were acquitted by an all-white jury that year.
Emmett Till memorial: Marker will be made bulletproof after photo of gun-toting students surfaces
Photo surfaces: 3 Ole Miss students posed with guns in front of Emmett Till's memorial. DOJ may investigate
Till's story and his status as a catalyst to the civil rights movement went largely forgotten for several years, but the case came back to light when the FBI reopened the investigation in July 2018.
Donham, one of the central figures in the investigation, made headlines after she allegedly recanted the testimony she made during the initial trial of Till's killers, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, in the 2017 novel, "The Blood of Emmett Till." Her daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, later said she "never recanted."
Pablo Correa, the primary photographer and videographer for the project, said there are plans to add more to the app in the future.
Justice Department: Emmett Till murder case reopened, family 'wants justice to prevail'
“Part of our vision for the app and website was to link to primary source documents housed in FSU’s Emmett Till Archive, which is an ongoing project,” he said. “We will continue to build out each location and add new sites as documents become available.”
The app is available on iOS and Android.
Contributing: John Bacon, Jerry Mitchell, USA TODAY. Follow (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion Ledger on Twitter: @clarionledger
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Emmett Till: New app documents history of 14-year-old's death
