A train ride and a ceremony in remembrance of Emmett Till, 70 years later

ALSIP, Ill. (WGN) — A poignant moment of remembrance, intertwined with the painful memories of Emmett Till’s brutal murder, has run its course from the southwest suburbs to Greenwood, Mississippi, on the 70th anniversary of his death.

A ceremony in remembrance of Emmett Till—the 14-year-old boy from the South Side of Chicago who was brutally murdered on Aug. 28, 1955, after he was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman—took place at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip on Thursday.

“We join together with you and we will never forget,” Rev. Thomas Irving said at Burr Oak. “And so again, this is an act of kindness and an act of love that we share in this moment.”

Hours earlier, an Amtrak train arrived in Greenwood with a special contingent of passengers aboard. On Wednesday, the remaining members of the Till family boarded the train and took the same ride Emmett took from Chicago to the Mississippi town.

“Racism is not going anywhere. Racism is still well and alive,” said Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., Till’s cousin. “This trip can help us to see how much progress we’ve made, and how much more we need to.”

Parker Jr. was with Till on that train ride south in 1955. He is the last surviving eyewitness to his abduction.

As students of history may remember, Till’s mother insisted her son’s casket remain open during his funeral. It was a decision meant for the world to see the suffering her son endured as he was abducted, taken to a barn, beaten, tortured and mutilated before he was fatally shot in the head, tied to the blade of a cotton gin, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River.

It was a seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

An all-white jury later acquitted the men who killed Till. They went on to confess to the murder years later in a magazine article, and the woman who accused Till of whistling at her later recanted her story.

The gun used to shoot Till has been put on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. According to the Associated Press, it was previously in the possession of a family living in the Mississippi Delta, who agreed to donate the weapon on the condition they would not be named in its exhibit. The gun was authenticated by matching its serial number to the one listed in FBI files on Till’s murder.