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When his body was found, Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral. She hoped that the horrifying image of his grotesquely brutalized head might reach people the way words have not. “A photograph was what would be required to transform witnessing in society,” Lewis said—and indeed, the funeral photos had a tremendous impact at the time when news outlets published them. “For me, there can be no more important question than asking, ‘What does seeing the…
