Un(re)solved is a major initiative that draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews. The multiplatform investigation tells the stories of lives cut short, and examines a federal effort to grapple with America’s legacy of racist killings through the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
The story takes many shapes. It is told through a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, augmented-reality installation and documentary. In addition, the project makes available to the public for the first time a comprehensive interactive list of all those whose cases were re-examined by the Department of Justice. As of 2020, the list stood at 151 names. Among the victims: voting rights advocates, veterans, Louisville’s first female prosecutor, business owners, mothers, fathers and children. Every person’s story is documented, and the cases can be explored by decade, state or themes that illuminate troubling patterns.
At the outset of the project, FRONTLINE forged a relationship with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) a mission-driven program of interdisciplinary teaching, research and policy analysis on race, history and criminal justice. With support from CRRJ, FRONTLINE reporters gathered what could be known about the individuals on the list, conducting interviews with family, friends and witnesses, delving into newspaper archives and gathering documentation including headstone applications, draft cards and archival photographs.
At the heart of the project has been an effort to center the voices of the families. Over the course of the reporting, FRONTLINE reached out to more than a hundred family and friends of the victims whose stories we tell throughout the series, some of whom had never been interviewed. FRONTLINE partnered with StoryCorps – whose mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world – to record nearly two dozen oral histories with the families before they are lost to time. Those oral histories are featured in the project and will be archived in the National Library of Congress.
FRONTLINE also spoke with current and former Justice Department and FBI officials, state and local law enforcement, lawmakers, civil-rights leaders and investigative journalists. Their first-hand experiences and perspectives on what prompted the FBI’s cold case initiative and how it has been implemented since the Till Act passed offer insight into what the outcomes say about that effort.
To lead the creative vision for the interactive and installation, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker and technologist Tamara Shogaolu. Shogaolu rooted the visuals of Un(re)solved in the powerful symbolism of trees. “I was really inspired by looking at the role of the tree as a symbol in American history,” Shogaolu said. “It’s been looked at as a symbol of freedom, we look at it as a connector between generations, and also there’s the association of trees with racial terror.” By turning the forests depicted throughout Un(re)solved into beautiful spaces, the artists sought to reclaim them for African Americans and to honor the victims.
Shogaolu was also inspired by the African American tradition of quilting. Among enslaved African Americans forbidden to read or write, quilts provided an important space to document family stories. Today, quilting remains a creative outlet rich with story and tradition. The artwork in Un(re)solved weaves in textures, motifs and patterns to create a quilt that the stories live within.
In the interactive, the stories are brought to life in part through impressionistic animations rooted in archival source materials. Shogaolu says this is a technique she uses in her artwork to help audiences remember that both the people and events in her stories are real. For Un(re)solved, the archival photos are transformed into colorful illustrations, given texture and layered with other imagery. For black and white images when colors were known, the artists tried to fairly represent them.
In the podcast series, award-winning reporter and host James Edwards (16 Shots and South Side Stories), probes what prompted the FBI to investigate decades-old unsolved civil rights era murders, and why the Department of Justice has made no arrests and brought no new federal prosecutions in the more than 10 years since the act was passed. He also interweaves his own personal story. By reflecting on his family’s history, sharing candid moments with victims’ next of kin and drawing on childhood memories of racist killings that resonate against today’s headlines, Edwards creates a through line between the stories of yesterday and today.
“Before names like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery became names as familiar to me as those of my family or friends — I often thought about the many number of lives, Black like mine, who did not get to see their next life,” said Edwards. “I hope by bringing these stories to light that each person on the Till Act list becomes less invisible and is remembered along with the names that are better known. All of them were someone to somebody, and the fullness of their lives deserves to be remembered.”
The documentary – produced with Retro Report and directed by filmmakers and journalists Yoruba Richen (The Killing of Breonna Taylor and The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show) and Brad Lichtenstein (When Claude Got Shot and As Goes Janesville) – focuses on the case of Wharlest Jackson and the violent campaign of terror waged by the Ku Klux Klan gang known as the Silver Dollar Group. Against the backdrop of Jackson’s story in Natchez, Mississippi, the film takes a critical look at the history, record and limitations of the Till Act effort, and the reasons families like the Jacksons feel the government has failed them.
Above all, Un(re)solved would not be possible without the historic and contemporary contributions of universities, civil rights groups and the press, particularly the Black press, who have ensured the ongoing public record of racist violence in the United States. To pay homage to these groups, the web interactive begins with a quote from journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, one of the first to document with precision the horrors of racial terror in America. “The way to right wrongs,” she wrote, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
We invite you to explore Un(re)solved — a testimony to the lives of the individuals, and the multi-generational impact of their untimely, unjust loss.
