The story of the brutal lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till is familiar to most Americans and its inclusion in narratives of the civil rights era is common. His death, and the acquittal of his killers, is remembered as a spark which helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement. It is commemorated as an event which spurred activists on to fight for justice. This memory of Emmett Till is frequently found in civil rights museums. Visitors learn about the "Emmett Till generation" and read Rosa Parks' assertion that "I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back." This paper seeks to interrogate a particular aspect of this collective memory of Till, by considering how the grief and public mourning of his mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, is remembered in commemorative spaces. I will discuss the use of photographs, quotes, and narratives in, for example, the NMAAHC and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. I will ask how this memory of mourning is used in a context in which Black mothers continue to bury their young sons. Just as Mamie Till's mourning galvanised civil rights activism in the 1950s and 60s, can – and should – memories of mourning inspire the twenty-first century fight for racial justice? What is gained and what is lost when mourning continues to be performed, this time at a site of memory? Mamie Till-Bradley believed that "the whole United States is mourning with me;" in this paper I will ask whether a collective memory of Emmett Till can inspire a collective mourning.
