The cotton gin is a ubiqitous presence in the Delta of Mississippi: a handhewn cavern with a skin of corrugated metal, flanked by a concentrater for burning waste. It is the largest manmade structure on the landscape, floating on the table flat Delta land like a dark mirage.

In this gin, according to local lore, in August of 1955, Emmitt Till, a 14 year old black boy from Chicago, was murdered. A gin fan tied around his neck, his body was thrown into a nearby swamp. He was accused of harrassing a white woman in a local grocery store. The Emmitt Till lynching became one of the most explosive events in American race relations in the 1950's.

Sources on the lynching of Emmett Till
© D. Gorton 2001
Cotton Gin, near Greenwood, Mississippi, scene of 1955 lynching
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