Delta Mississippi barn where Emmett Till was slain is purchased as a ‘sacred site’ thanks to a $1.5 million gift from TV producer Shonda Rhimes

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https://mississippitoday.org/2025/11/24/barn-emmett-till-sacred-site/

Delta barn where Emmett Till was slain is bought as a ‘sacred site’​

by Jerry Mitchell November 24, 2025​

Jerry Mitchell

Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and killed in this barn on Aug. 28, 1955. Credit: Jerry Mitchell/Mississippi Today
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The long-hidden monument to bigotry and brutality — the Mississippi Delta barn where Emmett Till was tortured and killed in 1955 — will soon become a “sacred site” for all to see.
On Monday, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center announced that it had purchased the barn, thanks to a $1.5 million gift from TV producer Shonda Rhimes, who was moved to donate after reading about the barn, saying, “My hope is that this story never gets lost.”
Dave Tell, author of “Remembering Emmett Till,” said the barn was “written out of history by the very men who committed the crime there — erased from public memory as part of a broader effort to bury the truth and protect white perpetrators. Preserving it now is an intentional act of restoration.”
About 2 a.m. on Aug. 28, 1955, J.W. Milam, his brother, Roy Bryant, and others abducted the Black Chicago 14-year-old from the home of his uncle that he was visiting and took him to the barn, where they beat and killed him.
Till’s mother, Mamie, insisted on an open casket “to let the world see what they did to my son.” Thousands streamed past his body. Some wept. Some fainted. All were moved.

Mamie Till is held by Gene Mobley, who would later marry her, while she stares at the brutalized body of her son, Emmett Till. She opened the casket, and more than 50,000 saw his body. This photo taken by David Jackson, now in public domain, appeared in both the Chicago Defender and Jet magazine.
The brothers admitted to authorities they had kidnapped Till, but claimed they had released him unharmed. A month later, they went on trial for murder, but an all-white jury acquitted them.
Months later, the brothers admitted in Look magazine that they had indeed beaten and killed Till, but authorities were unable to prosecute the brothers again because of double jeopardy.
That Look magazine article also concealed the existence of the barn because that would implicate the others involved, some of whom worked at the barn, Tell said.“Till was killed because of racism. And the barn was pushed out of public memory because of racism. It’s all part of the same story.”
For Keith Beauchamp, producer of the “Till” film and director-producer of “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” the barn’s preservation brings mixed emotions.
“On one hand, it’s significant that a physical site connected to Emmett Till’s story will be preserved for future generations,” he said. “On the other hand, it’s also a place that represents deep pain and injustice. Regardless, it is a part of American history that must be acknowledged rather than forgotten, because remembering helps us understand and avoid repeating past mistakes.”
Beauchamp thanked Rhimes for her “generous gift to help preserve this history, especially during a time of debate over how our past should be remembered.”
He praised Jeff Andrews, who bought the property that included the barn in 1994. After learning about the barn, Andrews began to let Till’s family and other visitors spend time at the historic site.
Beauchamp praised his care, “maintaining the barn and welcoming the public, kept the site meaningful long before any official preservation began.”
In 2007, a group of Tallahatchie County citizens, Black and white, gathered outside the courthouse in Sumner — the same courthouse where Till’s killers walked free — and publicly apologized.

 

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The interior of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Miss., pictured Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2025. The center honors the legacy of Emmett Till and educates visitors about his life and the Civil Rights Movement. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
An open letter published Monday on the Emmett Till Interpretive Center website says, “That act of honesty became a moral compass for our work. Since then, we have restored the courthouse where justice failed, commemorated the riverbank where Emmett’s body was found, and replaced the signs that hatred tried to destroy. Every project has carried the same conviction: a nation does not grow stronger by forgetting; it grows stronger by telling the truth. The barn is the next chapter in that conviction.”
On its website, the center said, “We did not want to have to pay for sacred ground. We understand that many other people also feel that even $1 is too much to pay for a site where such deep harm occurred. It’s an obstacle we wrestled with every step of the way. We explored every possible alternative to purchase, including asking for the owner to donate the property and exploring legal options including easements and eminent domain, but none were viable.
“The turning point came when we asked ourselves: What happens if someone else buys it? We could not risk this site — one of the most sacred in American history — falling into the hands of speculators or even hate groups. The barn is simply too important to leave to chance.”
The center, which has partnered with the National Park Service, will hold the title to the barn: “We chose preservation over risk, and truth over silence — because you can’t put a price on our history.”
Davis Houck, the founding director of the Emmett Till Archives at Florida State University as well as the Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies, said the fact the money to purchase the barn came from private philanthropy “makes this a most generous gift — to the community of Drew, to the state of Mississippi, and ultimately to the entire nation.”
The center’s director, Patrick Weems, told Mississippi Today that buying the barn is just the start of this major project for the nonprofit. “Now we’re working to raise the resources to transform it into a sacred site,” he said.
By the 75th anniversary of Till’s lynching in 2030, the center says it plans to open the barn “as a part of a larger public memorial — a place of truth, creativity and conscience. Visitors will come not to look at tragedy, but to confront their own role in the ongoing work of democracy.”
The center says its role “is not possession, but protection — serving as caretakers on behalf of the community and the nation.”
The center says its work “has always been shaped by the truth, courage and moral vision of the Till family, especially Mamie Till-Mobley’s charge that ‘let the world see.’ … We will continue to listen to and engage family members, descendants, and community elders as we transform this site of trauma into a sacred space for remembrance, healing and collective conscience.”
Till’s cousin, Deborah Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, echoed the center’s sentiment. “We consider that area sacred ground where Emmett was murdered,” she said.
She welcomes further conversations with the center and wants to learn more about the upcoming plans, she said. “Will the family’s concerns be in consideration?”
Possible plans include creating a welcome center for visitors in nearby Drew. “For too long, people in the Delta — especially in places like Drew — have carried the weight of this story without the world truly seeing us,” said Gloria dikkerson, founder of We2Gether Creating Change, a nonprofit based in Drew. “The barn’s preservation means our voices, our land and our legacy will finally be part of how the world remembers Emmett Till — and how it learns from him.”
Another welcome center may be built in Mound Bayou, Mississippi’s first all-Black town, where Medgar Evers once sold insurance for his mentor, civil rights leader and surgeon Dr. T.R.M. Howard.
Both men worked on the Till case, tracking down witnesses for the historic trial that drew international attention. The injustice of the killers getting away with murder helped propel the modern civil rights movement.
Author Wright Thompson, who wrote “The Barn” about this historic piece of soil, called the purchase “the most important thing to happen to the Delta in generations because history is most accurately told here, and most reliably erased, through the land. Who owns it, who farms it, who lived and died on it, whose ghost is trapped in it. The Delta remains a place where power is tied to ownership of the dirt.”
He praised Rhimes for stepping “into the breach and through her generosity, the dirt has been reclaimed, and once reclaimed, the slow process of cleaning the blood from it can begin. This is a place people will visit for generations.”

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[Rekkapryde]

The fact those fukkass crackaz never paid for their crimes disgusts me.

 

[boogers]

if it was my family id wanna burn it down

just evil. i hope they have some kind of security out there at night. i saw what whites did to the emmitt till memorial sign... it got hit with so many shotgun rounds they had to replace it with a bulletproof sign

 

[NoGutsNoGLory]

if it was my family id wanna burn it down

just evil. i hope they have some kind of security out there at night. i saw what whites did to the emmitt till memorial sign... it got hit with so many shotgun rounds they had to replace it with a bulletproof sign

Right? I thought it was just me. Something about it still being around rubs me the wrong way. Maybe im wrong

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

the fact that its still there is wild