OurTupelo

Following a request from temporary Hinds District Attorney Brad McCullouch, the Hinds County Board of Supervisors on Monday agreed to pay for a prosecutor to resolve cases that haven’t gone to trial. 

McCullouch told the board that the new prosecutor would work to quell crowding in the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond – a proposal that delighted some of the county’s five supervisors.

The new DA was appointed by Gov. Tate Reeves in July after former Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and resigned.

“All I can say is, ‘outstanding idea,’” said District 2 Supervisor Tony Smith, who represents the county’s rural, westernmost district from Bolton to Utica.

One cause of overpopulation at the jail is that cases trickle through the county’s justice system, with some people sitting in jail for over a year before trial. As of Sunday, the jail, which has 594 beds, is overcapacity by more than 300 people, according to the county’s daily inmate count. 

McCullouch argued that an additional prosecutor would allow the office to indict cases faster or offer defendants an alternative resolution more quickly. 

The county pays for salary supplements to each of the 15 state-funded prosecutors in the district attorney’s office, which prosecutes felony cases in the state’s Seventh Circuit Court District. The money for the additional prosecutor will come from the county’s “unappropriated surplus,” said Lynn Seals, the county administrator. 

Seals said the county’s comptroller would know the total dollar amount of the county’s unallocated surplus, but the comptroller did not return an email from Mississippi Today by press time. 

The boost to the DA’s budget comes after supervisors heard pleas from the Hinds County Public Defender’s Office earlier this year to increase the salaries of the county’s 23 public defenders. 

For years, Gail Wright Lowery, the head public defender, has told the board that her office experiences persistent turnover because public defenders are not paid enough in Hinds County. Lowery has also argued that this turnover leads to jail crowding because indigent defendants lack an attorney who could seek their release. 

At the time, the board told Lowery the county didn’t have the funds for a $350,000 across-the-board pay raise she had requested. 

“If we can get these people out, then we can have extra money to give you guys a raise,” Smith said earlier this year. “So the problem is, I understand you need more money. I wish we had (it) to give it.”

Seals then found about $261,000 in leftover pandemic relief money the county had previously allocated to construction of a water tower at the new jail. 

But the stopgap funding didn’t stop the turnover in Lowery’s office. On Monday, McCullouch attended the board meeting with a new prosecutor who recently left the public defender’s office, virtually doubling his salary overnight. 

In addition to resolving cases of people who haven’t been indicted, McCullouch told the board the new prosecutor would work to reduce the number of people in Raymond on nonviolent charges or who need “expedited medical services.” 

“We think it’s going to be dramatic savings to the county,” he said. 

District 5 Supervisor Bobby “Bobcat” McGowan was the lone voice opposing the new prosecutor. He asked McCullouch: “My question is, do we got to pay for it? Is it in your budget, what you’re trying to do?” 

Lawmakers on Monday took the first steps toward potentially redrawing Mississippi’s legislative, congressional and judicial districts in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Louisiana v. Callais decision that weakened minority voting protections. 

The Joint Redistricting and Reapportionment Committee, comprised of House members and senators, met at the state Capitol for the first time since the Supreme Court ruling. The state legislative committee will solicit input from voters in eight different areas of the state over the next two months on how the districts should be redrawn in light of the Callais decision. 

The committee also voted to hire attorneys from Butler Snow to serve as general counsel. Republican Sen. Dean Kirby from Pearl was elected chairman of the committee, and Republican Rep. Noah Sanford of Collins was named vice chair.

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann declined to say which districts he thinks the committee should prioritize or even if it was certain the committee will redraw judicial, legislative and congressional districts. 

“I don’t want to pre-suppose anything,” Hosemann said. “The committee needs to do its work. They’re going to be going all over Mississippi hearing from people.” 

Though the committee has scheduled eight hearings, some voting rights activists worry the hearings are merely a facade, and lawmakers have already made up their mind to dismantle majority Black districts. 

Amir Badat is the Southern states director and senior adviser for Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization. He told Mississippi Today in a statement that the committee’s redistricting process is “putting lipstick on a pig.” 

“At its core, this process is an effort to diminish Black political power,” Badat said. “No number of meetings or public hearings will change that fact. If the joint committee truly cared about what the public wants, it would end this sham process before it begins.” 

The joint hearing came after Scott Colom, Mississippi’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, organized a voting-rights town hall on Saturday evening with Democratic U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Mississippi NAACP Director Charles Taylor. 

The panel encouraged the roughly 100 attendees at Farish Street Baptist Church in Jackson to make sure they’re registered to vote, help register other people to vote and turn out to vote in record numbers.

Alsobrooks told Mississippi Today that she would encourage Mississippians to “stay the course and keep fighting” against efforts to weaken majority Black districts. 

“It was not all that long ago, we’re reminded, that John Lewis walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and was beaten within an inch of his life with a pole that was wrapped in barbed wire” as he marched for voting rights for Black people, Alsobrooks said. “It was a sacrosanct right that we’re never going to give up.” 

If the committee decides to tackle congressional redistricting, Thompson, Mississippi’s lone Black and Democratic official in Washington, will almost certainly be targeted by the majority-Republican state Legislature. 

Some Republicans, such as state Auditor Shad White, have called on the Legislature to effectively dismantle Thompson’s district, which comprises portions of the Jackson metro area and the majority-Black Delta. 

Thompson told Mississippi Today on Saturday that his campaign team will be monitoring the hearings and hopes state lawmakers will truly be receptive to the comments they gather from the public hearings. 

“I hope their work will be done in public and not behind closed doors,” Thompson said. 

Here is the schedule of hearings that will take place at 6 p.m.: 

• Aug. 18 at Itawamba Community College in Tupelo 
• Aug. 27 at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia 
• Sept. 1 at Delta State University in Cleveland 
• Sept. 8 at Alcorn State University in Natchez 
• Sept.10 at a venue to be determined in Meridian 
• Sept. 17 at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg 
• Sept. 22 at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Gulfport 
• Sept. 24 at the state Capitol building in Jackson

A former University of Mississippi vice chancellor for student affairs no longer faces animal abuse charges stemming from the discovery of malnourished dogs and remains on property she and her husband own.  

Lafayette County Circuit Judge Gray Tollison dismissed 10 felony charges and 10 misdemeanor counts against Charlotte Fant Pegues because her husband and co-defendant, Terry Pegues, “testified at trial he was the sole provider for the dogs at issue,” according to a Wednesday order.

In August 2024, Lafayette County sheriff’s deputies went to the couple’s rural property south of Oxford and found several bulldog puppies caged “in a cruel matter,” a burned dog, a dog skeleton and a German Shepard mix dead in a kennel, according to the indictment for Fant Pegues and Pegues. 

Deputies found dogs alive, including several that were malnourished, court records state. Ten were found dead, including some that still had collars and chains attached to them. 

Graham Carner, Fant Pegues’ attorney, said she plans to move forward after maintaining her innocence for the past two years. 

“While the dismissal vindicates her from a legal standpoint, she has been severely damaged from these rushed and baseless charges. Dr. Pegues lost her career, and the reputation that she built over a lifetime has been irreparably harmed,” Carner said in a Monday statement. 

Fant Pegues worked at Ole Miss from 1993 until 2025 in roles such as assistant provost and director of admissions. She began serving as vice chancellor for student affairs in 2019 when she was appointed on an interim basis. Fant Pegues went on personal leave after the indictment and retired July 1, 2025, Ole Miss spokesperson Jacob Batte confirmed.

Batte declined to comment Monday about the dismissed charges. In a statement around the time Fant Pegues was indicted, he said Ole Miss leaders were “deeply disturbed and appalled by any instance of animal cruelty” and clarified in a later statement that the charges did not result from any actions taken at or for the university. 

Fant Pegues’ charges were dismissed two weeks after her husband’s trial. 

A jury convicted Pegues on five counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty and sentenced him to a maximum six months per charge to run consecutively. Tollison suspended six months of the sentence, leaving Pegues to serve two years in the Lafayette County Detention Center. 

The judge prohibited him from owning, possessing or living with a dog for 15 years, according to Pegues’ sentencing order. The sheriff’s office is permitted to make unannounced visits to make sure he is following the court’s prohibition after release for six months. 

The court also ordered Pegues to pay a $1,000 fine for four counts, totaling $4,000.

The jury acquitted him of five misdemeanor cruelty charges and eight felony charges of aggravated animal cruelty. It declared a mistrial for two felony charges, meaning prosecutors could retry them with a new jury, dismiss them or reach a plea deal. 

Pegues told Mississippi Today in 2024 that he was “asking for a federal investigation due to false facts.” 

Molly Minta contributed to this report.

The campaign for Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch said on Monday that she will embark on an “announcement tour” across Mississippi, a move that could signal the launch of her campaign for governor.

The tour was unveiled in a news release from Fitch’s campaign email address, which said she will make a “special announcement” Wednesday morning at the Mississippi Republican Headquarters in Jackson. She will then travel to Hattiesburg and Gulfport later that day, followed by stops in Meridian, Columbus, Tupelo, Cleveland and Southaven on Thursday and Friday.

Fitch could run for a third term as attorney general, but it is common for elected officials to travel the state as they announce a run for another office. Secretary of State Michael Watson embarked on a similar tour the day he launched his campaign for lieutenant governor. Two of Fitch’s Republican rivals for the Governor’s Mansion, Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson and former House Speaker Philip Gunn, have both been traveling the state since launching their campaigns.

Mississippi Today also obtained a photo of an email exchange from a local chapter of the Mississippi Federation of Republican Women — a political organization that has supported Fitch throughout her career as state treasurer and attorney general — that shows members encouraging each other to show up for Fitch’s announcement of her “candidacy for Mississippi governor.”

Morgan Baldwin, Fitch’s longtime political strategist, told Mississippi Today he would “let Attorney General Fitch speak for herself” when asked for more details on the announcement tour.

At the Neshoba County Fair in June, Fitch stopped short of announcing a run for governor, but said she would make her 2027 intentions known soon.

“I’ve been very encouraged by people across the state, and I’m so grateful for the encouragement and faith and the trust people have put into me as the attorney general and the treasurer,” Fitch said. “I’m excited about next steps.”

In a speech that pointed toward the future, Fitch said Mississippi is nearing a pivotal moment that would shape its trajectory for years to come.

“We’re at a moment when we can transform Mississippi from one of the nation’s best kept secrets to the very top of the leaderboard,” Fitch said.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who was elected in 2019 and 2023, is limited to two terms. Gunn and Gipson have formally entered the race to succeed Reeves. In addition to Fitch, other Republicans considering a run for governor in bright-red Mississippi include Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, state Auditor Shad White, former U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper,and billionaire businessman Tommy Duff.

Fitch, a Holly Springs native, served two terms as state treasurer before being elected attorney general in 2019. She began her legal career in the attorney general’s office as a special assistant attorney general. She has also served as executive director of the Mississippi State Personnel Board, worked in private practice and was deputy executive director of the Mississippi Department of Employment Security.

Fitch garnered national attention for her role in advancing the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022. That decision, which was argued by attorneys in Fitch’s office, upended what had been a nationwide right to abortion.

Fitch is the first woman to serve as attorney general in the state, and would also be the first woman to serve as Mississippi’s governor, if elected.

The family of a woman who died of cancer has reached a legal settlement with a Mississippi prison system healthcare provider she sued in federal court claiming it failed to diagnose and treat her disease until it spread.

Susie Balfour died of breast cancer last year at the age of 64. Her lawsuit said exposure to cleaning chemicals in prison might have led to her cancer, and that prison health providers delayed or failed to schedule follow-up cancer screenings for Balfour even though they had been recommended by prison physicians. She only learned about the disease two weeks before her 2021 release from prison after serving more than 30 years.

Balfour sued three companies contracted to provide healthcare to prisoners at the facility over the course of her sentence — Wexford Health Sources, Centurion Health and VitalCore, the current prison medical provider. In an order handed down last week, U.S. Southern District Judge Kristi H. Johnson wrote that Balfour’s family had reached a settlement with VitalCore.

“This is one step in the fight to get justice for Susie, and for everyone who continues to be incarcerated and denied life saving care,” Balfour’s sister said in a statement to Mississippi Today. “We will not stop until those responsible are held accountable. These corporations choose profits over patients, and we intend to make sure those responsible for such inhumane greed answer for it.”

Balfour’s attorneys said they could not reveal specific terms of the settlement.

Wexford was dismissed as a defendant, while Balfour’s family intends to continue its lawsuit against Centurion. The companies have argued they followed laws with respect to the provision of healthcare to prisoners. A trial could begin in September or October. Balfour died in Shelby County, Tennessee, so a probate court needs to approve the settlement with VitalCore, Johnson wrote in her order.

Kansas-based VitalCore has settled other litigation from former prisoners alleging inadequate care, and some lawmakers have attempted to pass laws that could lead to its replacement as the prison medical contractor. It has recieved hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds for its work as Mississippi’s prison health contractor.

A spokesperson for VitalCore did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the settlement.

During more than 30 years of incarceration, Balfour used cleaning chemicals without protective gear, which likely contributed to her cancer, she argued in the federal lawsuit she filed in 2024.  

She placed blame on the prison health system’s current and former healthcare providers for failing to diagnose and treat the cancer for years, including not taking her for recommended mammograms and waiting until 2021 to take a biopsy, which ultimately confirmed the diagnosis. 

“I just want everybody to be held accountable,” Balfour told Mississippi Today in 2024. “… and I just want justice for myself and other ladies and men in there who are dealing with the same situation I am dealing with.”

Similar cancer diagnoses and delayed care might not have been isolated to Balfour. An earlier version of her lawsuit alleged at least 15 other incarcerated women contracted cancer after using cleaning materials at the Mississippi women’s prison, the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, and similarly had their diagnoses and care withheld, but some of those women were not plaintiffs in the lawsuit. 

Balfour’s family continued her lawsuit after her death. The court allowed her to give a deposition months before her passing to preserve her testimony for the case. Shirley Balfour, who is the executor of her late sister’s estate, took over as the plaintiff in the suit. Balfour’s son, Duwan, also joined the lawsuit as the wrongful death beneficiary. 

Balfour’s story also led to legislative reform that could protect future Mississippi prisoners from suffering a similar fate.

When Rep. Justis Gibbs, a Democrat from Jackson, caught wind of her story, he drafted legislation during the 2025 session to require protective equipment for prisoners. The bill died in the Senate, but he tried again this year, and the first-term Democrat ultimately advanced the only prison health care reform to survive legislative negotiations this session. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill into law this April.

The Senate this year again blocked most of the proposals to improve healthcare in Mississippi’s prisons, which were driven in part by findings from an ongoing Mississippi Today investigation.

Rep. Becky Currie, the House Corrections chairwoman driving the push for reforms, said she will try again next session.

Balfour was convicted of capital murder in 1989 for shooting Southaven Police Lt. Billy Lance, who stopped her and her boyfriend after a convenience store robbery. She received a death sentence, but it was overturned years later because the Mississippi Supreme Court found her constitutional rights were violated during trial.

She accepted a plea agreement for a lesser charge and was resentenced, her attorney said.

Instead of getting the chance to rebuild her life, Balfour was released with a death sentence, said Pauline Rogers, executive director of the RECH Foundation, who has highlighed Balfour’s case.

“Susie didn’t just survive prison, she came out fighting,” Rogers said in an earlier statement. “She spent her final years demanding justice, not just for herself, but for the women still inside. She knew her time was limited, but her courage was limitless.”

British jurist William Blackstone is cited with establishing the principle dating back to the 1700s that it is better for 10 guilty people to go free than one innocent person be incarcerated.

That principle continues to be cited and debated. The debate even questions what would be the appropriate number of guilty people going free opposed to one innocent person suffering a conviction and punishment.

A version of that principle also is at the center of a national debate about voting.

Some politicians, led by Republican President Donald Trump, and backed by Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, contend that the federal Congress should impose national voting standards that would reduce the chances of election fraud.

Other politicians, primarily Democrats, say instances of voting fraud are rare, and studies seem to support that argument, while changes proposed by Trump could make it difficult for eligible voters to cast a ballot.

Hence, the argument seems to be whether preventing what appears to be a few instances of voter fraud is more important than election access. How many people should be denied or hindered in their right to vote to prevent rare occurrences of voter fraud?

Mississippi politicians have a long – and sometimes sordid – history of siding with the argument that preventing voter fraud is more important than ensuring easy voter access.

Even today, it is more difficult to vote by mail in Mississippi than in any state in the nation. In many cases, people voting by mail must have their signature notarized at two steps in the process.

Other states have found what appears to be a more efficient and user friendly way to vote by mail while still ensuring voter security.

In many states, for instance, people voting by mail must provide the last four digits of their Social Security number or a state-issued voter identification number on the ballot. In other states, ballots received in the mail undergo an intense signature verification process, and importantly, normally there are election observers from the political parties who can challenge the ballots.

For decades, Republicans in Mississippi sought a voter identification requirement. Democrats, particularly Black Democrats, tried to block the efforts, arguing older African Americans who were denied the right to vote, would view a voter identification requirement as a return to the old days of Jim Crow.

Republicans in the Mississippi Legislature were offered a compromise that elderly voters – born before a certain date – would be exempt from having an identification to vote. Even though that provision ultimately would have led to a time when all people would have had to show an ID to vote, Republicans rejected the proposal and instead placed on the ballot a citizen-sponsored initiative requiring people to have a government-issued photo identification to vote.

That measure overwhelmingly passed in 2011.

Despite the argument that a requirement of a government-issued photo ID would restrict election access, it could be argued this was an instance when Mississippi politicians made efforts to ensure people were not denied their rights.

Then Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, who now serves as lieutenant governor, was charged with enacting the new voting requirement. To his credit, Hosemann took his job seriously and developed a plan to ensure all Mississippians had relatively easy access to a government ID and ensured multiple types of identification could be presented to vote.

For instance, it was determined that in Mississippi a student identification could be presented to vote. Texas, on the other hand, prevents student IDs from being used to vote, but allows gun licenses to be used.

The Texas law faced legal challenges. Hosemann likes to brag that the Mississippi law was not even challenged in court. 

President Trump wants to greatly limit voting by mail while requiring an identification to vote.

The fact of the matter is that most states – 36 – require an identification to vote. And even the president’s home state of Florida allows voting by mail – a process he often takes advantage of by voting by mail while he rails against it

So, perhaps the question is whether voter security is more important than ballot access for some people but not for others?

That like, Blackstone’s original premise, is an age-old debate.

U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat from Maryland, campaigned with Scott Colom, Mississippi’s Democratic Senate nominee, in Jackson on Saturday, where she encouraged voters to support Colom because he will prioritize access to affordable healthcare. 

“I feel every single seat is important in our country right now, as we’re trying to get back to a place where we are focused again on the middle class in this country,” Alsobrooks told Mississippi Today in an interview. 

Alsobrooks joined Colom and several healthcare advocates at the Capital Club in downtown Jackson on Saturday morning, where they pointed to Mississippi’s dire maternal health metrics, which are some of the worst in the nation, as a need for a senator who will vote to protect against cuts to Medicaid. 

Around a dozen people shared stories about their struggles obtaining affordable health care and about family members who have died giving birth in Mississippi. 

“We reject as a premise that we should ever accept that you cannot afford healthcare,” Alsobrooks said. 

Colom has made health care a central focus of his campaign and has pointed out that thousands of Mississippians have dropped health insurance plans they had through the Affordable Care Act. 

Active enrollment in the plans fell by about 70,000 people in Mississippi between February 2025 and February 2026, a nearly 25% drop, according to new federal data. People are dropping their plans because enhanced federal tax credits, which made health insurance more affordable for 22 million Americans, expired in December. 

Congress first authorized the expanded subsidies in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mississippi was one of the states that benefited the most from the increased federal support. 

Both Colom and Alsobrooks criticized Colom’s opponent, Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, for backing the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill that slashed Medicaid benefits and largely gave tax breaks to higher-income earners. 

Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, told Mississippi Today in a statement that he encourages the Colom campaign to “continue campaigning on raising taxes and giving illegal immigrants free healthcare.” 

“Both issues that may sell to his Massachusetts supporters, but not in Mississippi,” Monssen said. 

Colom and Alsobrooks also planned to speak at a town hall in Jackson on Saturday evening about voting rights, alongside Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson and Mississippi NAACP Director Charles Taylor. 

Alsobrooks is the first U.S. senator to campaign for Colom. She is the first Black person elected to the U.S. Senate from Maryland and is the third Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Mississippi educators are preparing for new financial literacy, computer science and civics requirements under Senate Bill 2294, a wide-ranging education law that took effect July 1. 

Many of the classroom requirements of the Mississippi Math Act will be phased in over the next several years. The bill incorporates the J.P. Wilemon Jr. Financial Literacy Act, which failed to pass as a standalone measure in previous legislative sessions. 

Beginning with the 2027-28 school year, Mississippi public schools will be required to provide financial literacy instruction for students in grades 6-8. The curriculum will cover topics including income, budgeting, financial services, postsecondary education financing and consumer rights. The law also establishes new computer science and civics education requirements that will be implemented on separate timelines.

At Canton Public School District, financial literacy has traditionally been taught through partnerships with community organizations. Candra Nelson-Scott, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, said outside educators provide students with practical lessons on managing money. 

“They talk about banking, savings accounts, investment accounts, budgeting, as well as informing (students) about loans, interest rates and principals,” she said. 

Nelson-Scott said the new law will establish consistent statewide expectations while giving districts flexibility in how the curriculum is delivered. She said district leaders and teachers will help determine whether financial literacy is offered as a standalone course or integrated into an existing class. 

Teacher training is expected to begin in summer 2027 as districts prepare for implementation.

Heather Morrison, director of P-20 Partnerships for the Mississippi Department of Education and the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, said the department is working with partners across the state to prepare educators. 

“For the high schools, the teachers are going to have to earn an endorsement,” Morrison said. “For middle school, there’s no technical endorsement (requirement) yet.” 

Morrison said any educator may add a personal finance endorsement to a teaching license by completing a Mississippi Council-approved economics education course. 

She also said students entering seventh grade in the 2026-27 school year — the graduating Class of 2032 — will be the first required to earn a personal finance credit before graduating from high school. 

“Kids who take (College and Career Readiness courses) meet that personal finance requirement,” Morrison said. “If they don’t take that class, then they have to take the personal finance class.” 

Morrison said financial literacy is a life skill that should extend beyond the classroom and encouraged parents to reinforce those lessons at home.

“I would hope parents are having these conversations with their students at home and make it a real-life conversation … having these conversations at home about budgeting, student loans, student debt,” Morrison said. “I definitely think it’s a positive (way) to spur conversation.” 

Nelson-Scott agreed, saying early exposure to financial concepts can better prepare students for adulthood. 

“I’m speaking from personal experience,” she said. “I can’t remember having that conversation (about financial literacy). Giving students this information early… gives them an early start.” 

Students and parents can expect financial literacy instruction to begin in Mississippi middle schools during the 2027-28 school year as districts implement the new requirements. 

CARROLLTON – What if Emmett Till had made it safely back to his home in Chicago?

That’s the question best-selling author Sarah Lewis seeks to answer in her new book, “If Emmett Till Lived,” a collection of essays and photographs meant to illustrate possibilities of the life of Till, who would have recently celebrated his 85th birthday.

Up to 100,000 attended his funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago on Sept. 6, 1955. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, left open the casket of her 14-year-old son. “I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy,” she said.

The photograph of Till’s brutalized body appeared in newspapers around the world. 

One reporter described his mother’s decision as opening the casket and opening the nation’s eyes, Lewis said. “Mamie Till-Mobley had the prophetic wisdom to understand that central for American democracy is the act of witnessing together what many want to not see — the crucible of this country.”

She understood that the work of the Civil Rights Movement “could not continue without the importance of images,” Lewis said. 

Before a month had passed after the kidnapping and lynching, an all-white jury acquitted two of Till’s murderers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who later shared their lie-filled story of killing Till with Look magazine in exchange for cash.

The injustice helped propel the movement. Four days after hearing a talk about what happened to Till, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama. She was later quoted as saying she was thinking about Till the whole time.

The injustice inspired so many young people to join the movement that they became known as “the Till generation.”

Lewis, an art and cultural historian serving as the John L. Loeb associate professor of the humanities and associate professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, decided to do her new book after visiting Graball Landing, the place where Till’s body was found three days after he had been brutally beaten, shot, weighted down with a cotton gin fan and thrown in the Tallahatchie River.

On her flight back to Boston, Lewis said she wondered, “How different would this country be if everyone knew how hard-won it has been to honor the humanity of this child, of this Black child, for all that has been done?”

Now, on the anniversary of Till’s 85th birthday, the question remains, has society “made good on the sacrifice of his life?” she asked. “I thought, ‘I have to do my part.’”

She went through 18,000 photographs in the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago’s collection and “found images that I’m not afraid to say felt were inspired by a kind of a divination,” she said. “I was praying to Emmett Till, asking how he wanted his life to unfurl. And the images in the book represent the answers.”

She chose about 180 pictures taken by Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange and other photographers for the project.

She pointed to the cover photograph of a father tossing his son in the air. “Is Emmett Till the father throwing up his son?” she asked. “He should’ve been able to have had that option in his life. Or is he the young child who looks so secure in that love, knowing that his father’s gonna catch him when he comes down?”

The titled horizon on the cover points to the work that still needs to be done, she said. “ Emmett Till is all of our stories. It’s a book that opens with a call to the celestial, to the divine.”

She pointed to the inside cover page featuring a flock of birds. Exactly 55. The year Till was killed. 

“It seems to be one of these winks that keeps happening,” she said, “Emmett Till making his presence known.”

These images — such as the photo of a distinguished looking painter with his brushes — begin to converge around the story, she said. “This is a way to imagine one of the pathways he could have chosen. He could have been an artist.”

The book includes essays from Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 

Lonnie G. Bunch III; Sherrilyn Ifill, the Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University; and Patrick Weems, who runs the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner. Others, such as film director Ava DuVernay, comment on the images.

An exhibition of these pictures will open Sept. 10 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in coordination with the book’s publication by the museum and DelMonico Books • Distributed Art Publishers.

Most historical figures fade as time passes, but Till continues to grow as a symbol, Lewis said. “Emmett Till’s life didn’t end in the casket. It really continues with all that happened in its wake.”

Some have responded to monuments that remember Till’s life and death with violence. The Graball Landing marker was shot 317 times.

Those in charge of these markers erected a bulletproof replacement. “Every act of resistance, every roadblock to honoring Emmett Till only underscores, not only the importance of Emmett Till’s legacy,” Lewis said, “but the importance of the very thing we often take for granted, which is the power of monuments and markers.”

Last month, Illinois designated July 25, Till’s birthday, as an annual day of reflection and remembrance to honor him and his mother.

Lewis said she has been stunned by the response to her book, “mainly because independently so many mention that they are moved to tears.”

The brutal killing of Till and the injustices that followed became a collective trauma, she said. “Every generation has needed a way to grieve.”

She called the book “almost a reverse wake, a reverse funeral. The images take you chronologically through the unlived life of Emmett Till.” This ascension honors Till’s life, “with all of the beauty that could have come with it,” she said.

She has already heard from educators interested in using the book for classes, she said. “The question, ‘What if Emmett Till lived?’ inspires so many: what would have life required of us all, foremost among them, that one can easily teach entire units on American history from it.”

This book project, she said, never would have happened without the help of Till’s cousin and best friend, the Rev. Wheeler Parker, the last surviving witness to his abduction.

Lewis and Parker visited Mississippi in July at the invitation of Charles Sims, whose great-great-great grandfather was a Confederate veteran and U.S. senator for Missisisippi, J.Z. George, who led the fight to disenfranchise Black Mississippians through the state’s 1890 constitution.

Sims, who spoke on Memorial Day at Parker’s church in Chicago, led the pair on a tour through George’s Cotesworth. “He and I connected through history,” he said. “That bonded us.”

He recalled the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who talked of his dream that one day “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”

Having Parker and others come to Cotesworth was “more important than coming to a plantation. It was about Mamie Till-Mobley. It was about Simeon Wright. It was about Wheeler Parker,” Sims said. “We’re putting the right foot forward for the future.”

Parker said he is pleased with what Lewis has done with the book. For too many years, articles were filled with lies about Till, he said. “You feel so helpless because you are not in control of the narrative, but then if you live long enough, you come to something like this where everything comes out.”

Lewis said she and Parker selected all the images together for the book. “When you watch him look at a photograph and envision Emmett Till’s life, envision the life he should have had alongside him, I mean, it’s profound beyond description,” she said. “Nothing has moved me ever to my soul the way that working on this alongside Rev. Wheeler Parker has.”