Open Casket

George Yancy is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. Yancy has published over 250 combined scholarly articles, chapters, and interviews that have appeared in professional journals, books, and at various news sites. Yancy is known for his numerous essays and interviews in the New York Times' philosophy column The Stone, and Truthout. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books, including most recently Until Our Lungs Give Out: Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future and In Sheep’s Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism (coedited with philosopher Bill Bywater. Yancy is editor of the Philosophy of Race Book Series at Bloomsbury.A. Todd Franklin is the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies at Hamilton College. Franklin’s research focuses on the existential, social, and political implications of various critical and transformative discourses aimed at cultivating individual and collective self-realization. He teaches courses on existentialism, Nietzsche, and critical race theory; and he is the recipient of numerous honors and accolades for excellence in teaching. Franklin’s most recent work includes “The Transformative Power of Community Engaged Teaching” in Wiley Blackwell’s A Companion to Public Philosophy, and “The Gospel According to Baldwin: Prophetic Genealogy as Social Praxis” in Genealogy: A Genealogy.

This book is a valuable resource for students, scholars, and the general reading public, offering insight into both past and current struggles for human rights and dignity and demonstrating the power of civic witnessing.

• Acknowledgments CasketA. Todd FranklinMournable George Yancy Chapter 1. Discerning the Dead Anita Allen Chapter 2. The Trace of Evil’s Reason: Emmett Till’s Open Casket and the Violent Evil of Black NothingnessBiko M. Gray Chapter 3. Reframing the Spectacle: The Reality of the Black Child Body Carolyn M. Jones Medine Chapter 4. Till's Tortured Body as Sign and SymbolWilliam Hart Chapter 5. “If These Waters Could Talk:” Emmett Till and the Terror of Diaspora WatersTracey E. Hucks Chapter 6. Mamie Till’s Black Maternal Grammar LessonKris F. Sealey Chapter 7. Debility of Terror and its Ethical Refusal: (Re)Encountering Emmett TillDevonya N. Havis Chapter 8. Bearing Witness to HorrorMelvin RogersChapter 9. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Horror Matt Vega Chapter 10. Revolutionary Black Motherhood Beyond Resistance?Keri Day Chapter 11. G-Mom Mamie Till and Her Only Baby: Captive Maternal Ties to Ida B. WellsJoy James Chapter 12. Bobo and the Anti-Black LogosJosiah Young Chapter 13. Witnessing Emmett Till Molefi Kete AsanteChapter 14. Unconscious Resonances: Identification, Até, and the Mythic Emmett TillShelden GeorgeChapter 15. Many saw Emmett, but not EnoughBlanche Radford CurryChapter 16. Emmett Till and the Aporias of Racial Terror LynchingsAlfred Frankowski Chapter 17. The Experiential Absurdity of Black Being in the World: A Black Existentialist Analysis of the Murder of Emmitt Till E. Anthony Muhammad Chapter 18. Blues for Mamie Till: Re-Encountering the Emmett Till Exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture Paul Cato Chapter 19. Pathological AgencySemassa Boko About the Contributors