The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP) is honored to mount an initiative born in collaboration between Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr., Emmett Till’s cousin, best friend, and the last surviving witness to his kidnapping. In the wake of what would have been Till’s 85th birthday, our project engages individuals and institutions around the country as we ask, “What would Emmett Till’s life have been had he safely boarded the train back home to Chicago? What would that life have required of us all? Have we made good on his sacrifice?”

At a moment when history is being fiercely contested, and violent opposition still remains to the very idea of honoring Till’s memory, this project serves as a creative monument to his unlived life and continuing legacy.

The exhibition, If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground brings together photographs by more than 110 artists from MoCP’s permanent collection, inviting viewers to imagine and meditate on the years that Till missed.

The standalone publication, If Emmett Till Lived: A Creative Monument, edited by Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and designed by Miko McGinty, features photographs from the show and original essays by Lonnie G. Bunch III, Vinson Cunningham, Paul Farber, Sherrilyn Ifill, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Siddhartha Mitter, Jeneé Osterheldt, and Patrick Weems. The book is published by MoCP and DelMonico Books˙D.A.P.

The project is a collective endeavor inviting civic and cultural leaders to select an image for the show to represent their hopes for Till’s unlived life. Collaborators in imagining If Emmett Till Lived include Dr. Marvel Parker and Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr., along with Lonnie G. Bunch III, Chelsea Clinton, Ava DuVernay, Alicia Garza, Sherrilyn Ifill, John Legend, Brent Leggs, Franklin Leonard, Wynton Marsalis, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, RaMell Ross, Amy Sherald, Yara Shahidi, Hank Willis Thomas, Hamza Walker, Patrick Weems, and Deborah Willis. The full set of contributors, including members of the Till family, geographically represent Till’s untaken journey home from Mississippi to Chicago and the Great Migration, born in part of the violence and injustices of the Jim Crow rule that took his life. The project forms a collective arena to consider how freedom has been and can be secured on American ground.

Why create this exhibition now? Because more than 70 years after Emmett Till’s death, we are still asking, have we made good on the sacrifice of his life?

We have been deeply moved at the confluence of people and events surrounding this project. Reverend Parker was honored at a dinner held at the Obama Presidential Center at the end of July. Toward the end of August, Patrick Weems’s Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Mississippi will take possession of the barn where Emmett Till was murdered in order to convert this sacred space into a site of remembrance and dedication. And on September 9, in Chicago, the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, the site of Emmett Till’s funeral, will unveil a recreation of its historic sign and illuminate it for the first time, heralding the opening of our exhibition. Additionally, a dedicated website
— ifemmettlived.org — will launch in September 2026, providing visitors with expanded information about the exhibition and its related public programs.

Artists featured in If Emmett Till Lived include a cousin of Till, professional photographer Lance Omar Thurman, represented by his image of the remains of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Mississippi. The full line up of artists includes Hanif Abdur-Rahim, Jody Ake, Harold Allen, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Stephen Althouse, Tom Arndt, David Avison, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Uta Barth, Alun Be, Endia Beal, Dawoud Bey, Jay Boersma, Christian Boltanski, Clarissa Bonet, Phil Borges, Jack D. Bridges, Sheila Pree Bright, Christopher Burkett, Patty Carroll, Keith Carter, William Carter, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Peter Cochrane, Teju Cole, Raul Corrales, Edward Curtiss Colver, Kenn Cook Jr., Barbara Crane, Paul D’Amato, Paul Dahlquist, Bruce Davidson, Tim Davis, Lloyd DeGrane, Adam Ekberg, Paul Elledge, Elliott Erwitt, Terry Evans, Nona Faustine, Scott Fortino, Steven D. Foster, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Russell K. Frederick, Leonard Freed, Lee Friedlander, Daniel Castro Garcia, Gretchen Garner, Meg Gerken, Lyle Ashton Harris, Declan Haun, Todd Hido, Milton J. Hinton, James Hodgson, Earlie Hudnall Jr., Hyers + Mebane (Martin Hyers + William Mebane), James Iska, Dave Jordano, Ron Jude, Michael Kenna, Lewis S. Kostiner, Dorothea Lange, Jason Lazarus, An-My Lê, Annie Leibovitz, Ralph Lemon, Nathan Lerner, Patrick Linehan, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Stephen Marc, Diana Matar, Aspen Mays, Cecil McDonald, Jr., Roger Minick, Natasha Leonie Moustache, Kenji Nakahashi, Mário Cravo Neto, Carlos Javier Ortiz, Esther Parada, Gordon Parks, Antonio Perez, Alayna N. Pernell, Jack Perno, Alexis Peskine, Cara Phillips, David Plowden, Marc PoKempner, Brad Richman, Milton Rogovin, Walter Rosenblum, Whitten Sabbatini, Karen Savage, Francesco Scavullo, Victor Schrager, Sara Shamsavari, Arthur Shay, Anna Shteynshleyger, Marvin Joe Shuck, Guillaume Simoneau, Victor Skrebneski, Neal Slavin, Frank Stewart, Richard Terborg, Bob Thall, Hank Willis Thomas, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Lance Omar Thurman, Charles H.Traub, Arthur Tress, Aaron Turner, Peter Turnley, Jerry N. Uelsmann, Carrie Mae Weems, and Helena Chapellín Wilson.

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis is guest curator for the exhibition If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground in collaboration with Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr. Chief Curator and Deputy Director Karen Irvine is acting as coordinating curator, with Krehbiel Family Curatorial Fellow Deanna Whitlow as assistant coordinating curator. Jessica Williams Stark serves as guest curatorial associate, Vision & Justice, and Caro Campos serves as Research Fellow, Vision & Justice

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis is founder of Vision & Justice, a publishing and research initiative for artists, scholars, and leaders seeking to examine the foundational role of visual culture in America’s representational democracy. She currently serves as the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Through Vision & Justice, she has organized landmark public programs and convenings and founded the Vision & Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture. She is the author or editor of more than 60 publications, including The Unseen Truth, winner of the American Book Award; the best-selling The Rise; Carrie Mae Weems; and a special “Vision & Justice” issue of Aperture. Lewis was named as one of TIME magazine’s 2026 “Closers” in recognition of her work toward achieving greater equality in the United States and has received honorary degrees from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2026), the Institute for Doctoral Studies in Visual Arts (2026), and Pratt Institute (2024). Before joining the faculty of Harvard, she held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate Modern, London, and served as a critic at Yale University School of Art.

Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr. is Administrative Assistant, 5th Illinois Jurisdiction-West, Superintendent of Good Tidings District, and Pastor of Argo Temple Church of God in Christ, where he has been a member since Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. is a survivor of the Emmett Till kidnapping and murder in Mississippi in 1955. At age sixteen, he and his cousin Emmett Till, age fourteen, traveled to Mississippi for a two-week vacation at his grandfather’s home in Money, Mississippi, to visit with his young uncles. Their trip was abruptly interrupted by the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till, who was taken at gunpoint from the home of Moses Wright. Emmett’s body was found three days later floating in the Tallahatchie River with a seventy-five-pound cotton gin tied around his neck with barbed wire.

Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr. graduated from Argo High School in 1958 and Molar Barber College in 1959. A graduate of the School of Modern Photography, he moonlighted as a photographer, attended Moraine Valley Community College, H. C. Mason Theological Bible School, Global University, and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He served his country for two years in the U.S. Army as a Medical Specialist.

In February 2022, Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr. was guest of President Joe Biden at the White House for the signing of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill. On July 25, 2023, he was honored to introduce President Joe Biden at the ceremony for the signing of the proclamation creating the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. He was awarded a Doctorate Degree in Humane Writings from Delta State University in 2025. He has been married for 59 years to Dr. Marvel McCain Parker.

Support for this exhibition

Lead support for If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground is provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Henry Luce Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This project is funded in part by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Impact Fund for Photography, a museum endowment, the Lewis Foundation, and the Vision & Justice Fund through Sarah Elizabeth Lewis. The Charles F. Kettering Foundation is proud to partner with Vision & Justice on the If Emmet Till Lived project.

Image: Stephen Marc, Untitled, from Changing Chicago Project, 1988. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy: Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago.

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