Emmett Till Memorial - The Casket That Changed a Nation
A stop on Washington DC National Mall Walking Tour, a free self-guided tour.
Inside the segregation gallery a line forms for a quiet, separate room. It holds the glass-topped casket of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old from Chicago who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Photography is not allowed inside.
His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago so the world could see what had been done to her son. Tens of thousands filed past, and photographs published in Jet magazine helped spur the civil rights movement.
The casket itself was nearly lost. When the FBI reopened the case in 2005, Till's body was exhumed and reburied in a new casket. The original was later found rusting in a shed at Burr Oak Cemetery near Chicago, and in 2009 the family gave it to the museum.
Take your time here. When you are ready, continue up through the galleries to the Contemplative Court.
More on Wikipedia: Emmett Till · Mamie Till · Jet
Stops on this tour
- Washington Monument
- National Museum of African American History and Cu
- National Museum of American History
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
- National Gallery of Art
- United States Capitol
- United States Botanic Garden
- National Museum of the American Indian
- National Air and Space Museum
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- The Smithsonian Institution Building - The Castle
- Freer Gallery of Art
- Jefferson Memorial
- World War II Memorial
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Korean War Memorial
- Lincoln Memorial
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- White House Ellipse
- White House
- Lafayette Square