December 3, 2025
Shonda Rhimes’ $1.5M donation to buy the barn where Emmett Till was lynched highlights her commitment to preserving Black history.
Shonda Rhimes continues her dedication to preserving Emmett Till’s legacy, recently donating $1.5 million to acquire the barn where Till was lynched in 1955. This purchase underscores her larger effort to honor his memory and advance racial justice.
“Through the generosity of writer and producer Shonda Rhimes and the resolve of local residents, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center has purchased and protected the barn near Drew, MS, where Emmett Till was brutally beaten and murdered,” the Emmett Till Interpretive Center announced on Nov. 24. “It will be preserved not merely as a structure, but as sacred ground — a place where truth can live without fear of being forgotten.”
The Center announced the purchase two years after Rhimes partnered with them to preserve sites tied to Till’s murder, including the barn where he was killed. For Rhimes, Till’s death isn’t just a historical injustice—it reflects ongoing racial inequities still felt today.
“It’s not over,” she said in 2023, citing the ongoing racial hatred and violence against the Black community. “Young Black men are still being killed for being young Black men.”
Rhimes was inspired to join the Center’s memorialization project after reading Wright Thompson’s 2021 Atlantic article, “The Barn.” Located deep in the Mississippi Delta, the barn sits just off a rural gravel road. Thompson, a Mississippi native devoted to uncovering his hometown’s hidden history, visited the site numerous times.
“I don’t think I had ever known where it happened, where a child had been tortured and killed,” Rhimes told Good Morning America in 2023. “I couldn’t let it go. I kept thinking about it for weeks afterwards.”
Nearly 70 years after Till’s murder, his death remains a symbol of racial violence in the U.S. Visiting Mississippi from Chicago, 14-year-old Till was accused of whistling at Carolyn Bryant Donham. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, brutally beat and shot Till in a barn, later confessing in a magazine interview after being acquitted by an all-white jury.
Donham, who died in 2023, was never arrested. Photographs of Till’s mother mourning over his open casket helped spark the Civil Rights Movement. Rhimes’ purchase of the barn preserves this history at a time when Black history faces censorship, ensuring the story — and its connection to today’s struggles for racial justice — is not forgotten.
“Racism still exists,” she said. “I think it’s important to understand a history like this so that people can make sure that it never happens again.”
The Center announced the barn’s purchase on Nov. 24, which would have been Mamie Till-Mobley’s 104th birthday. The memorial is planned for completion by 2030, marking the 75th anniversary of Till’s murder.
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