among friends

ET and Emmett Till. Alienation and alienation. These themes will be central to Pope.L’s performance in March. Ever since our presentation on Wednesday, I’ve been thinking about the ability of images to connect us with a historic moment. Few pictures are more potent than the horrifying image of Emmett’s brutalized face. The now famous photograph galvanized an entire nation to act in outrage at the atrocities of first Emmett’s death and then his murderer’s acquittal. Time magazine recently ran an article showing a series of images depicting the civil rights movement, culminating in the election of Barack Obama. The first image of this series was a smiling picture of a Emmett Till. The narrative of images spanning Till’s own story—from innocence to transformed mutilation and death—carry enormous symbolic weight. They remind us both of the successes of the civil rights movement, as well as the sordid history from which our country is still recovering. Read the rest of this entry »