“Emmett Till: How She Sent Him and How She Got Him Back” by Lisa Whittington, contributed by Sydney Wiredu (2025)
Loss is never just about what’s gone. It’s about what could have been. It’s about the lives interrupted, the futures stolen, the dreams cut off before they ever had a chance. This painting of Emmett Till is a wound on the canvas, a reminder that Black pain is not just history. It’s memory. It’s inheritance. The contrast in the artwork is jarring—one half of Emmett’s face is smooth, youthful, untouched, a boy preserved in innocence. The other half is devastation. Flesh rotted and torn away. Lips swollen, an eye completely erased, as if trying to be removed from existence. The brushstrokes on that side are chaotic, angry, layered with color that screams of suffering—reds and blacks blending into decay. This is what hatred does. It doesn’t just kill. It disfigures. It tries to erase. But Emmett’s gaze is still steady. He still looks at us. He forces us to see.
But grief does not sit still. Mamie Till-Mobley refused to let it. She pried open the coffin and made the world look. Forced them to see what hate had done. She took the horror of loss and turned it into a fire. And that fire spread. The colors in this painting reflect that fire. The bright blue background isn’t just sky—it’s jarring against the horror of his wounds, a contrast between what should have been and what was. Even the yellow of his collar, an echo of warmth, of childhood, of the life he was meant to live, feels cruel when placed next to his ruined skin. I think about all the names we’ve had to chant, all the funerals we’ve had to witness through screens, all the times we’ve swallowed rage just to make it through another day. I think about how grief for Black lives is never just personal. It is collective. We do not cry alone. We grieve in movements. We carry each other through the pain, turn it into something that cannot be ignored. And yet, the loss still sits heavy in the chest. It still stings. It still burns.
This painting reminds me that loss does not fade. It lingers in the air. It settles into bones. It waits. But it also fuels. Loss is what makes us remember. It is what makes us say their names, write their stories, refuse to let them be erased. The art itself fights against erasure—the textured, grotesque brushstrokes on one side and the smooth, almost unfinished quality on the other tell a story of a boy frozen between two worlds. The world where he could have lived and the world that took him. I look at this image and I don’t just see tragedy. I see defiance. I see the power of memory. I see a reminder that Black lives do not vanish when they are taken. They are carried forward. They are spoken about. They are painted into existence, over and over again, so that history does not forget. Emmett Till is still here. We are still here. And we will not be silent.