Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, joins Ronald Collins, author of Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial, to discuss the tragedy of Emmett Till’s murder, the shocking story of the trial that followed, and its impact on the Civil Rights Movement. Thomas Donnelly, chief content officer at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Ronald Collins is the editor in chief of First Amendment News. Before he retired, he was the Harold S. Shefelman Scholar at the University of Washington Law School and prior to that was a scholar at the Washington, D.C. office of the Newseum’s First Amendment Center. In addition to the nine books that he co-authored with David Skover, he is the editor of Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Free Speech Reader and co-author with Sam Chaltain of We Must Not Be Afraid to Be Free. He also authored Nuanced Absolutism: Floyd Abrams and the First Amendment. His latest book is Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial.
Janai Nelson is president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. She formerly served as associate director-counsel and as a member of LDF’s litigation and policy teams. She has also served as interim director of LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute and in various other leadership capacities at LDF. Prior to joining LDF, Nelson was associate dean for Faculty Scholarship and associate director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law where she was also a full professor of law and served on the law school’s Senior Leadership Team.
Thomas Donnelly is chief content officer at the National Constitution Center. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- Ronald K. L. Collins, Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial (2024)
- H.R.55 - Emmett Till Antilynching Act
- President Joseph Biden,Remarks by President at Signing of H.R. 55 (March 29, 2022)
- Joy-Ann Reid, Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America (2024)
- Valerie Russ, “A former Temple U law professor speaks about how the Emmett Till murder trial shaped the Civil Rights Movement," The Philadelphia Inquirer (April 11, 2024)
- Liz Fields, “The story behind Nina Simone’s protest song, 'Mississippi Goddam,'” PBS (Jan. 14, 2021)
- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley, National Monument
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