Lyrical Politics: Reflections on the Role of Grief in Political Life

Posted on 17 December 2018 by L. Ashley Atkins

It’s said that Mamie Till Mobley helped to catalyze the civil rights movement. When people say this what they have in mind, principally, is her decision to present her son’s lynched body in public. Sometimes though her influence is tacit and the catalyst becomes the verdict to acquit the two men accused of Till’s murder.
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Coming to Grief: Violence, Mourning, and Interracial Intimacy

Posted on 3 December 2018 by L. Ashley Atkins

In my last piece, I defended two claims regarding the relationship of Dana Schutz to Mamie Till Mobley. The first concerned Schutz’s statement that Open Casket was undertaken through empathy with Mobley. The response among critics has been to treat this ‘claim of empathy’ as a terribly naive. I think that this is a mistake
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The Empathy Defense: Emmett Till, “Open Casket,” and ‘White Empathy’

Posted on 19 November 2018 by L. Ashley Atkins

“A painting of a dead black boy by a white artist.” This is British artist Hannah Black‘s description of Dana Schutz’s Open Casket, a painting included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and one that Black has urged be destroyed. The ‘dead black boy’ is Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955,
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