This past weekend, I went to Money, Mississippi to paint a location I have thought about for a long time. It is the roadside location of Bryant Grocery, where began one of the most notorious crimes in Mississippi, a 1955 murder that many believe helped to spark the civil rights movement. An African American teenager from Chicago, Emmett Till, was visiting relatives in Money and entered the grocery with his companions. Till was the last to leave and a young white woman, Carolyn Bryant, later alleged that Till menaced, grabbed, and wolf-whistled at her. Within a few days, Till was kidnapped by white men at night from his relatives' home, brutalized, murdered, and dropped in a nearby river. The men accused of the murder were tried by an all-white, all-male jury and acquitted, though they later admitted their crime in an interview with Look Magazine. In the 2000s this case was reopened and Till's body exhumed, but ultimately no further action was taken.
In a new book, the accuser, now 82, recants the accusation.
Anyone traveling in the area can learn a lot from the excellent displays at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center across from the Sumner Courthouse.
Across the road from where I was painting was a group of men salvaging the remains of a recent train wreck. One lane of traffic was closed and this sharply slowed down the trucks and cars that usually race down this road. A large number of people slowed to observe the painting under way, including 4 or 5 cars of people leaving a post-church lunch at the home next door to the Grocery. Not a single person mentioned (or asked me if I know) what happened there. People rolled down their windows and struck up a conversation for a few minutes. I did get some interesting questions, such as "Do you frame those?" or "Do you think my wife'd like something like that for Mother's Day?" or "Do you hire out?"
I may add some more to this later, including visits with Till's cousin, Wheeler Parker and his wife, whom I met on several MCJ road trips. But for now, I'll put up the painting as it came about. The main difference in this was to do the underpainting in gray and establish a tonal base. It produced some interesting effects early on to have the gray show through in places. I also painted this in a rougher-edged style, almost like carving out a woodcut, but the temptation is so strong to smooth out the rough edges. Once more I lost the edginess by working it a little too long.
Here it is.