Emmett Till Memorial Triptych

In 1955, 14 yr old Emmett Till was brutally beaten and murdered for whistling at a white woman. His horrified mother wanted the world to see what the murderers had done to her child. She had an open casket funeral showing his mangled face. Thousands of people came. The murders were acquitted but later admitted to the crime. This became one of the seminal events of the Civil Rights Movement. One of the murderers once said that he couldn't understand why Emmett Till "...wouldn't just stay dead and kept coming back." This led me to thinking about Emmett Till as a Christ like figure. A triptych is traditionally a church altar piece. The center of my triptych has Emmitt Till and Mamie Bradley posed as Mary and Jesus. The river in which Emmett being thrown in the left panel winds through the painting becoming a river of people who were leaders and martyrs in the Civil Rights Movement. . On the outside of the doors Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King are depicted as saints.

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