Yard Memorial Draws Attention to African American Lives Both Lived, Lost

There is an African proverb that says, “As long as a person’s name is called, they never die.” With the spirit of that proverb in mind, John Thorne, pastoral minister at Sacred Heart Parish in Detroit and executive director of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, created a memorial in his front yard for Black men and women whose lives have been taken unjustly, complete with crosses bearing their image and name.

A Visit to Emmett Till’s Coffin

by Effie CaldarolaOver 60 years ago, a young African American boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi after an encounter with a white woman in a country store on a dusty road on a hot, humid Southern day.