The magazine of the photo-essay
Jan/Feb 2023 back issue
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!” Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film maker
Shadows of Emmett Till
by Bob Newman
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The Mississippi Delta has been called ‘The Most Southern Place on Earth’, a region of layered histories that collidewith each other on a daily basis.Itis a place that defines America like no other part of the country – a culture entwined with slavery, poverty, and political and economic oppression.Itis the land that gave birth to the creative genius of B. B. King and to the murder of young Emmett Till on August 28,1955. Shadows of Emmett Till seeks to probe that complex past by observing the many ways the shadow of Till’s murder, still hangs over the Delta. This work breathes the Delta air and seeks to frame the region and its people in a 21st-century context, at a time when white America may be starting to finally come to terms with the sins of its past. Along the way, past spills in to present, with parallels to George Floyd and so many others. President Joseph Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill on March 29, 2022,
making lynching a federal hate crime. Beginning in 1900, the United States Congress had previously tried and failed to pass the bill over 200 times
Sunday morning, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 2018 © Bob Newman
Brooklyn Chapel, Money, Mississippi, 2018 © Bob Newman
Friends, Crowder, Mississippi, 2016 © Bob Newman
Afternoon bike ride, Crowder, Mississippi, 2016 © Bob Newman
You have arrived, Bolton, Mississippi, 2018 © Bob Newman
Abandoned cotton gin, Money, Mississippi, 2018 © Bob Newman
Table for one at Wee Jay’s, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 2014 © Bob Newman
Night at Red’s, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 2014 © Bob Newman
House party at Wee Jay’s, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 2014 © Bob Newman
Michael Raymond, Crowder, Mississippi, 2018 © Bob Newman
Black Bayou Bridge,Glendora, Mississippi, 2021 © Bob Newman
Cotton picker, Pulaski County, Arkansas,1935 (archival photo) © Ben Shahn, photographer, and Library of Congress,U. S. Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection