Un(re)solved

Roman Ducksworth Jr., Peter Francis, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Alberta O. Jones. Four names, four cases reopened under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, implemented in 2008 to re-examine racist violent crimes from the days of the civil rights movement.

In this interactive documentary, each of these four names represents a tree at the edge of a forest. You start their story by saying the victim’s name out loud. As you scroll along a timeline, you click through to police files, newspaper reports, and audio excerpts from interviews with relatives, accompanied by sober animations. Each of the four main stories invites you to wander further into the forest, where all cases revisited under the act can be explored.

The stories underscore not only the importance of the Emmett Till Act, but also its limitations; its focus lies too firmly on the frequently inaccessible route of prosecution. In this forest filled with symbolism, justice is sought in a different form, through the light that your cursor literally shines on the stories.