Eyewitness to Kidnapping of Emmett Till Hasn’t Closed His Eyes to Quest for Racial Justice
The Rev. Wheeler Parker, 85, was a 16-year-old Chicago resident on vacation during August 1955 in the Mississippi Delta when friend and cousin Emmett Till wolf whistled at a white woman. Within days he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by two white men who were acquitted by an all-white jury but subsequently confessed to the crimes. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)
Rev. Wheeler Parker Honors Friend, Cousin with Traveling Exhibit, Artwork
LAWRENCE — Black teenagers Wheeler Parker and Emmett Till were on vacation from Chicago when they stepped into the white-owned Mississippi Delta grocery store operated by Roy and Carolyn Bryant to buy candy in the summer of 1955.
In a region saturated with influences of the Ku Klux Klan and in rural towns organized around brut…
