Un(re)solved Opens at the Civil Rights, State History Museums
PBS Frontline’s traveling augmented-reality exhibit Un(re)solved will open Saturday, August 28, at the Two Mississippi Museums. The opening date will align with the commemoration of the death of Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
“Sixty-six years ago, an innocent fourteen-year-old boy was murdered, and justice never prevailed,” said Pamela D. C. Junior, director of the Two Mississippi Museums. “I think it is especially fitting that FRONTLINE’s new traveling exhibit begins its journey at the Two Mississippi Museums where we remember the people who sacrificed so much for freedom and equality.”
Drawing on more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents, and dozens of firsthand interviews, the multi-platform exhibit examines the federal government’s effort to investigate more than 150 civil rights era cold cases under the authority of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act (Till Act).
Un(re)solved tells the stories of the people on the Till Act list—voting rights advocates, veterans, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children—and the families still seeking justice today.
Un(re)solved’s advisory council includes Jerry Mitchell, investigative reporter and founder of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Mitchell’s reporting helped lead to convictions in cases such as the 1963 assassination of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Other members of the Un(re)solved advisory council include Margaret Burnham, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University; Jelani Cobb, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism; Rhea Combs, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; Leslie Fields-Cruz, Black Public Media; Hank Klibanoff, Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory University; Stanley Nelson, Firelight Media; Ron Nixon, The Associated Press; and Lisa Osborne, Black Public Media.
“We are proud to use the multiplatform, investigative journalism in Un(re)solved as a way to shine a light on these individuals and their families and their quests for justice, and to contribute to the national conversation surrounding the reckoning on racism in America,” says Raney Aronson-Rath, FRONTLINE executive producer.
The project consists of a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, a touring augmented-reality exhibit, as well as a documentary and companion education curriculum for high schools and universities.
The exhibit will run from Saturday, August 28, through Sunday, October 24, in the FedEx and Medgar and Myrlie Evers Exhibition Halls at the Two Mississippi Museums. Fifteen-minute tours will be available Tuesday–Friday at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Ticket prices are $15 for adults and $8 for youth ages 4–22. Discounts are available for students, seniors, active duty military, veterans, and groups of ten or more. Admission for children under the age of three is free. Ticket price includes admission to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Museum of Mississippi History, and all special exhibitions. Admission on Sunday is also free.
Museum hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
FRONTLINE is U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series known for exploring the issues of the times through powerful reporting and storytelling. FRONTLINE is produced by GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS.