Students From Prairie View A&M University Build Park Honoring Emmett Till

Fifty-three years ago, an all-white jury acquitted two white men of the murder of 15-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. The men, protected by their constitutional right of not being placed in double jeopardy, later admitted to the murder in an interview in Look magazine.

Till, a black teen from Chicago who was visiting relatives in Mississippi for the summer, was kidnapped and murdered reportedly because he whistled at a white married woman in a local store. Photographs of Till’s brutally beaten body were published in Jet magazine and, according to some historians, jump-started the civil rights movement.

Now a 20-acre park and nature trail named in honor of Till has opened in Glendora, Mississippi, a few miles north of where the murder occurred.

About 100 students from Prairie View A&M University in Texas volunteered their time this summer to build the nature trail and landscape the park. The university also contributed money to the project.

Copyright © 2008. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.