AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It's been 70 years since the lynching of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi. White men kidnapped, tortured, shot and dumped him in a river. Today the state of Mississippi is embracing the Emmett Till story at its civil rights museum and spotlighting a new artifact - the murder weapon. The exhibit is in contrast to the Trump administration's push to downplay the darkest parts of America's racial history. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Wheeler Parker Jr. is Emmett Till's cousin. They grew up next door to each other in Chicago. In the summer of 1955, when he was 16 and Till was 14, they traveled together to Mississippi to visit relatives. Now 86, his memories of that trip are still vivid. He recalls their visit to Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Mississippi. As they were leaving, shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant came outside. Parker says Till tried to be a jokester, not understanding how dangerous that could be in the Jim Crow South.
WHEELER PARKER JR: And Emmett, being like he was, loved to make you laugh. He gave her the wolf whistle (imitating whistle). We could have died.
ELLIOTT: Parker is the last living eyewitness to what happened 70 years ago. A few days later, he says, Carolyn Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, showed up in the wee hours of the morning at Parker's grandfather's house, where they were staying. Wheeler says they came into his room first with a pistol and flashlight before finding Till.
PARKER: They took him, and that's the last time we saw him alive.
ELLIOTT: Till's bloated and beaten body was later found floating in the Tallahatchee River, weighted down by a cotton gin fan.
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ELLIOTT: The state of Mississippi has a new artifact to illuminate the story of the lynching.
NAN PRINCE: This is a pistol that we believe is the weapon that was used to kill Emmett Till.
ELLIOTT: Nan Prince, director of collections for Mississippi Department of Archives & History, is in a basement conservation lab with the gun laid out on a rolling cart.
PRINCE: It belonged to J.W. Milam, along with the holster.
ELLIOTT: Milam's initials are carved into the leather case.
PRINCE: I've been in this field for a long time, and I've never had an artifact affect me quite like this when I first saw it. It's just a tough thing to see, especially when you know how it was used and just the hatred that must have led to its use that night.
ELLIOTT: Back in 1955, an all-white jury acquitted Milam and Bryant of the crime, but the men later confessed to a reporter. Prince says the FBI has confirmed that the serial number on the gun matches their investigation records. She says it's a significant discovery, one that will now be part of the Emmett Till exhibit at the state's civil rights museum in Jackson. Museum director Michael Morris says it adds to what's known about Till's murder.
MICHAEL MORRIS: To me, this weapon just allows us to tell a fuller story about what happened to him.
ELLIOTT: Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, had insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world could see what they did to her son. The outcry helped fuel the civil rights movement.
MORRIS: A lot of the folks that I've met through the years that got involved in the movement - they all point back to the impact of the murder of Emmett Till. That's what galvanized them to be a part of the movement.
ELLIOTT: Mississippi is showcasing exhibits like this one at a time when President Trump is attacking the Smithsonian Institution and other museums for being too woke in the way they portray difficult American history. Archives director Katie Blount says she has not experienced that same backlash in conservative Mississippi, where state lawmakers allocated funding for a civil rights and history museum. She says telling Mississippi's history is something the agency has been doing since it set up its first permanent civil rights exhibit in the 1980s.
KATIE BLOUNT: So in a sense, we are today just doing what the department has always done, which is telling in a very even, balanced and accurate way the stories that make up our state.
ELLIOTT: Blount says the agency has long worked to preserve artifacts and sites associated with Emmett Till's murder, but had never located the gun. Then it surfaced in a history of the case published last year called "The Barn" by Wright Thompson. Thompson says the gun had been stored in a safety deposit box for decades. The family holding it asked to remain anonymous. Thompson is relieved that the state now has it.
WRIGHT THOMPSON: I think it's really important that this thing be sort of safe in the context of a museum and not just floating out in the world.
ELLIOTT: Thompson says Mississippi telling the truth shows strength.
THOMPSON: And not being so scared of your past that you can't forge some brighter future. I mean, I just think it's the most basic act of citizenship, is to say, this is what happened. This is who we are.
ELLIOTT: For Emmett Till's cousin Wheeler Parker, the discovery of the gun is more personal.
PARKER: It's been something that I've always wondered about for 70 years.
ELLIOTT: He says it gives validity to the horror of the history.
PARKER: Some of the people of this time - they don't want these stories told. It's American history, and they want to wipe it out. They want us to pretend like it never happened. But we need to tell the story.
ELLIOTT: With the gun, the story has a new chapter - one that Parker says gives him a sense of closure.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Jackson, Mississippi.
(SOUNDBITE OF TEEBS' "SHELLS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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