Justice
Enshrining the Sites of the Struggle for Civil Rights
The National Park Service is allocating $7.75 million in grants to shore up 39 places and projects across the U.S.
In late September, 1955, international attention came briefly to rest on the small town of Money, Mississippi, and the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in nearby Sumner. Two white men from Money tortured and murdered Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy visiting from Chicago, and sank his body in the Tallahatchie River. Soon after, in Sumner, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted them of all charges.
A week after the trial, The Nation reported that “the crowds are gone and this Delta town is back to its silent, solid life that is based on cotton and the proposition that a whole race of men was created to pick it.”