Chicago Tribune

Blair Kamin: The national African-American museum still stirs the soul — and drops hints of what to expect at the Obama Presidential Center

WASHINGTON - The line to see the open casket that once held the tortured body of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicagoan whose 1955 murder in Mississippi helped spark the civil rights movement, is long and moves oh-so-slowly. But scores of visitors to the National Museum of African American History and Culture still queue up.

The visitors file by, paying their respects, as though they were at the South Side's Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, where thousands gazed into this casket to see Till's mutilated face.

The display marks an emotional high point of the museum, which has drawn more than 3.5 million people since its Sept. 24, 2016,

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