Star Tribune
Emmett Till’s Minnesota cousin talks about ‘what we can do going forward’ to honor his legacy
Emmett Till was a child raised in love and killed by a hate he barely understood.
It’s been almost 68 years since the vacationing 14-year-old was bludgeoned, shot, wrapped in barbed wire, and dumped in the Tallahatchie to vanish into the Mississippi Delta like so many Black bodies before him.
All because he whistled at a white woman, who told her husband, who told his step-brother, who grabbed a gun. In an America of Jim Crow segregation and vicious, violent white supremacy, a wolf whistle from a 14-year-old could be a death sentence.
There are those who say – or scream at school board meetings, or legislate in statehouses – that there’s little point in teaching a chapter of history so sad, that makes white people look so bad, that was all so long ago and far away.
History is closer than we think. On April 15, Deborah Watts will talk with her neighbors in Plymouth, Minn., about her cousin, Emmett Till.
“We need to know the truth of what happened,” said Watts, who was a toddler when her cousin was lynched. “You need to explore and get underneath the narrative [and] find your place in the story.”
An all-white jury let his killers go free. A few months later, they confessed to the murder in a magazine interview. His family has spent seven decades ensuring that those men didn’t get the last word.
There will be a free screening of “Till,” the 2022 film about her cousin’s short life and long legacy at 1 p.m. at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth. After the movie, Watts will be on hand to answer questions.
When Till was murdered in 1955, there was hope that the shocking crime would push the federal government to pass anti-lynching legislation. When the United States finally made lynching a federal crime, it was 2022, and Emmett Till’s name was on the bill.
His name is also on a bill making its way through the Minnesota Legislature right now. The Emmett Louis Till Victims Recovery Program would fund $500,000 worth of health and wellness grants that benefit victims of historical trauma, their families, and their heirs. Emmett Till’s legacy is with us still.
Sharing that legacy is a labor of love for Watts and her family, through the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation they founded together. The family brought “our pain and our grief and our disappointment” to the work, Watts said. “And our hope.”
There had been more than 600 lynchings in Mississippi by the time two white men came with a gun and a flashlight to drag Emmett Till out of his bed in his great-uncle’s home.
But it’s Emmett’s name we remember, his movie we watch, his legacy written across laws and stories and scholarships.
We remember because his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley wouldn’t let us forget.
She forced herself to look at what they’d done to the body of her only child and refused to let the nation look away. She insisted on an open-casket funeral and allowed journalists to share images around the globe. She risked her life to testify at his murder trial, and devoted the rest of her days to ensuring his death would not be the end of his legacy.
The Till family, who could only watch as the legal system let his killers walk free, have thrown have thrown their arms around other families grieving children lost to police violence.
“We just don’t stop at the tragedy,” Watts said. “Behind the scenes, we are holding each other up and trying to ensure the legacy of our loved ones. To ensure their deaths are not in vain.”
They’ve never given hope that someone will answer for Emmett’s death. Watts and her daughter once dug through a courthouse basement to find the arrest warrant that had never been served to the white shopkeeper, Carolyn Bryant, for her role in the lynching.
“Are we a typical family out of Plymouth, Minn.? No,” Watts said with a laugh. “Are we standing on the steps of the capitol in Mississippi demanding justice? Yes.”
If you don’t face what happened to Emmett Till, you’ll miss the resilience and courage of his mother and all the others who fought and bled for Civil Rights. You won’t see everything America gained after we lost him. You won’t see all the work still left to do.
“We’re sitting here saying ‘This is the history and here’s where we are today,'” Watts said. “Let’s talk about what we can do going forward.”
The Lynx are in the hot seat.
The team lost Game 3 of the WNBA Finals series against the New York Liberty on Wednesday night 77-80, setting the stage for a decisive match at Target Center on Friday night. Fans in the arena reacted with resounding disappointment after Sabrina Ionescu sunk a three-pointer to break away from the tie game and dashed the Lynx’s chance at forcing overtime.
Before we get to the reactions, first things first: The Lynx set an attendance record, filling Target Center with 19,521 spectators for the first time in franchise history. That’s nearly 500 more than when Caitlin Clark was in town with the Indiana Fever earlier this year.
Despite leading by double digits for much of the game, the Lynx began the fourth quarter with a one-point lead over the Liberty and struggled to stay more than two or three points ahead throughout.
The Liberty took the lead with minutes to go in the fourth quarter and folks were practically despondent.
Of course, there were people who were in it solely for the spectacle. Nothing more.
The Lynx took a commanding lead early in the first quarter and ended the first half in winning position, setting a particularly jovial mood among the fanbase to start the game.
Inside Target Center, arena announcers spent a few minutes before the game harassing Lynx fans — and Liberty fans — who had not yet donned the complementary T-shirts draped over every seat.
DULUTH – The Minnesota and Wisconsin transportation departments will make upgrades to the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge in the summer of 2025, in preparation for the structure to become the premiere route between this city and Superior during reconstruction of the Blatnik Bridge.
Built in 1961, the Blatnik Bridge carries 33,000 vehicles per day along Interstate 535 and Hwy. 53. It will be entirely rebuilt, starting in 2027, with the help of $1 billion in federal funding announced earlier this year. MnDOT and WisDOT are splitting the remaining costs of the project, about $4 million each.
According to MnDOT, projects on the Bong Bridge will include spot painting, concrete surface repairs to the bridge abutments, concrete sealer on the deck, replacing rubber strip seal membranes on the main span’s joints and replacing light poles on the bridge and its points of entry. It’s expected to take two months, transportation officials said during a recent meeting at the Superior Public Library.
During this time there will be occasional lane closures, detours at the off-ramps, and for about three weeks the sidewalk path alongside the bridge will be closed.
The Bong Bridge, which crosses the St. Louis River, opened to traffic in 1985 and is the lesser-used of the two bridges. Officials said they want to keep maintenance to a minimum on the span during the Blatnik project, which is expected to take four years.
Red Wing will celebrate the grand opening of its first permanent set of pickleball courts next week with an “inaugural play” on the six courts at Colvill Park on the banks of the Mississippi, between a couple of marinas and next to the aquatic center.
Among the first to get to play on the new courts will be David Anderson, who brought pickleball to the local YMCA in 2008, before the nationwide pickleball craze took hold, and Denny Yecke, at 92 the oldest pickleball player in Red Wing.
The inaugural play begins at 11 a.m. Tuesday, with a rain date of the next day. Afterward will be food and celebration at the Colvill Park Courtyard building.
Tim Sletten, the city’s former police chief, discovered America’s fastest-growing sport a decade ago after he retired. With fellow members of the Red Wing Pickleball Group, he’d play indoors at the local YMCA or outdoors at a local school, on courts made for other sports. But they didn’t have a permanent place, so they approached the city about building one.
When a city feasibility study came up with a high cost, about $350,000, Sletten’s group got together to raise money.
The courts are even opening ahead of schedule, originally set for 2025.
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