Four Stations: Reckoning and Remembrance in Mississippi

Abstract

Four Stations is a 2018 video projection by Rico Gatson tracing the last known path of Emmett Till; from his fateful encounter with Carolyn Bryant at Bryant's drugstore, to the barn where he was killed, the spot in the river where his body was recovered, to Sumner Courthouse where his murderers – J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant – were acquitted. At its core Four Stations is an exploration of place, space, and the viability of memory. 75 years after Emmett Till's murder, images and objects connected to Till still hold resonance, but there's less consideration for the places left behind, each of which holds a complicated relationship to memorializing the events that happened there. Gatson employs deliberate non-inclusions of the iconic images associated with Emmett Till, instead choosing to give his audience sites to consider as places of reckoning and remembrance, despite the inclination of local Mississippians to let these places slip away into the past. This essay explores the questions around Gatson's decisions, as well as how his particular visual language articulates the events of 1955 for a contemporary audience.