The Emmett Till Interpretive Center (ETIC) in Sumner, Mississippi joined ICSC in 2024. The Center promotes restorative justice through storytelling and historic preservation, focusing on the 1955 Emmett Till tragedy to foster community healing and understanding to create a more equitable future. In addition to educational programming, ETIC preserves sites connected to the murder of Till – an African American child who was brutally lynched just after his 14th birthday for whistling at a white woman. From 2007 to 2020, ETIC worked to restore the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, the site of the 1955 murder trial of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, to its 1955 condition to serve as a site of remembrance. In 2015, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center opened across the street from the courthouse to provide educational programs and tours. ETIC has also erected memorial signs at Graball Landing, the site on the Tallahatchie River where Till’s body was believed to have been recovered in 1955. The sign has been repeatedly vandalized and has been replaced three times. The current sign at the river site, the fourth sign, is bulletproof.
Mississippi to Moscow have the spaces, skills and solidarity they need to tackle urgent threats to democracy, rule of law and peace. As 2024 comes to a close, pervasive threats target the very institutions that should be relied upon to foster equitable and free societies. These include educational systems, where censorship and propaganda prohibit new generations from accessing historical truths; and media outlets, which profit from misinformation and discord so much that over a third of people globally regularly encounter fake or misleading political news, and 39% of Americans have no confidence in media at all. Making matters worse are increased geopolitical tensions, rampant conflicts with deadly consequences for civilians, and disregard among many governments for human rights and international law. In the face of these threats, ICSC is rising to meet the moment, leveraging the power of memory to aid communities in countering historical erasure
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