Here is a strange and bitter crop: Emmett Till and the rhetorical complications of treescape memory

Abstract

On November 17, 2014, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder presided over a tree planting ceremony at Capitol Building Park in Emmett Till’s name. Holder announced that the “tree would become a living memorial, here at the heart of the Republic.” This article examines the rhetorical milieu surrounding the Emmett Till Memorial Tree to engage the rhetorical complications surrounding what critical geographers call “treescape memory.” Trees have long been a part of memorialization in western culture. They are simultaneously physical place markers of memory (celebrating life and noting loss) and social space-signs of resilient human nature (moving from “dead” traumatized pasts to “breathing” futures). In the public discourse circulating around the Till tree, the metaphorical sycamore-as-hope clashed with a fretful sense that the corporeal sycamore itself was insufficient to commemorate such a flag individual of the Civil Rights movement. That the tree was planted against a social landscape of battered Black bodies (i.e. the events of Ferguson) only complicated the ways it was received. This essay argues that the Till tree is positioned within a “treescape memory” field that fails to resolve the question of how to remember Till and to reconcile his meaning for contemporary contexts of violence.

Keywords:

• Emmett Till
• public memory
• treescape memory
• rhetoric of trauma
• memorials

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For more on efforts to commemorate Emmett Till regionally, including through local museums, historical trails, highway signage, and statues, see Anderson 2015. For more on Emmett Till’s story, especially as it connects to lynching in the South and in Mississippi (particularly), see Adams 1956; Crowe 2002; Crowe 2003; Hendrickson 2003; Kouck and Grindy 2008; Hudson-Weems 2006a; Hudson-Weems 2006b; Hudson-Weems 2007; Mace 2014; Metress 2002; Nelson 2005; Olby 2007; Orr-Klopfer 2005; Pollack and Metress 2008; Tell 2012; Thompson 2007; Till-Mobley and Barr 1999; Whitfield 1988; Wright and Boyd 2010.

2 For more on the importance of similar rhetorical choices, see Dickinson, Ott, and Aoki 2005; Haskins 2015; Phillips 2004.

3 There is debate as to whether Till was killed in Glendora in Tallahatchie County or Drew in Sunflower County (Anderson 2015).

4 For more on public memory and the 9/11 tragedy, see Biesecker 2007; Bostdorff 2003; Donofrio 2010; Jordan 2008; Milford 2016; Paliewicz and Hasian 2016; Vivian 2006.

5 For more on public memory and the Holocaust, see Hasian 2004; Hasian and Frank 1999; Levy and Sznaider 2006; Rothberg 2009; Zelizer 1998.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jason Edward Black

Dr. Jason Edward Black is professor and chair of Communication Studies at UNC Charlotte. His research program is located at the juncture of rhetorical studies and social change, with an emphasis on Native resistance, LGBTQ community discourses, and Black liberation rhetoric. Black is the author of Mascotting America: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports (University of Illinois Press 2018) and American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment (University Press of Mississippi 2015). He is also co-editor, with Casey Ryan Kelly, of Decolonizing Native American Rhetoric: Communicating Self-Determination (Peter Lang 2018), with Charles E. Morris, III, of An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk's Speeches and Writings (University of California Press 2013) and, with Greg Goodale, of Arguments about Animal Ethics (Lexington 2010). Black’s work has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Southern Communication Journal, Western Journal of Communication, Communication Studies, American Indian Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and in numerous book chapters.