Arts Dean's Faculty Research Presentation: HAVC Professor and Chair Martin Berger on The Invisibility of Emmett Till

Scholars have long noted the disparate coverage provided by black and white media outlets for the torture and killing of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in the summer of 1955. While images of Till’s mutilated head were widely published in the black press, not a single white newspaper, magazine or television station reproduced images of Till’s corpse until decades later. A white press willing to publish scores of articles on the murder was nonetheless unwilling to depict the victim’s body. Berger's talk explains the reticence of the white media to circulate photographs of Till’s corpse and considers what was lost in withholding these gruesome images from white Americans.

FREE admission. Open to the public.
Reception follows.