Inside from the Inside

That’s 14-year-old Emmit Till, beaten and lynched in 1955 Mississippi, and here lying in open casket back home in Chicago. Till’s body is bloated from being sunk in the Tallahatchie River.  His right eye is missing. There is a hole in his temple.

Till’s mother insisted on the open casket, viewed by perhaps 50,000 in person and millions more through photographs.  Her message to the world:  I dare you to look away.

Till’s is one of about 100 stunning photographs at Photos That Changed the World.  Like this one, many are brutal and absolutely in your face… and yet they defy us to look away.  Many, including the handful below, depict racism in images that are un-ignorable.

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Racism rarely looks like this today, at least not in America.  This is, of course good, news.  Lynchings have all but disappeared. We no longer drink from separate water fountains.  Few whites would stand publicly and jeer as a black student walks into school.

But as manifestations of racism become less stark, battling racism (hell, even talking about it) becomes more nuanced and subjective, open to interpretation through the veil of personal experiences and biases.

Racism today is more subtle, more veiled, perhaps even more subconscious.

Racism 2009 looks different from the 1955 version.  What photograph could present today’s version in reality as stark as the images above?

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