Here is a strange and bitter crop: Emmett Till and the rhetorical complications of treescape memory

On November 17, 2014, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder presided over a tree planting ceremony at Capitol Building Park in Emmett Till's name. Holder announced that the "tree would become a living memorial, here at the heart of the Republic." This article examines the rhetorical milieu surrounding the Emmett Till Memorial Tree to engage the rhetorical complications surrounding what critical geographers call "treescape memory." Trees have long been a part of memorialization in western culture. They are simultaneously physical place markers of memory (celebrating life and noting loss) and social space-signs of resilient human nature (moving from "dead" traumatized pasts to "breathing" futures). In the public discourse circulating around the Till tree, the metaphorical sycamore-as-hope clashed with a fretful sense that the corporeal sycamore itself was insufficient to commemorate such a flag individual of the Civil Rights movement. That the tree was planted against a social landscape of battered Black bodies (i.e. the events of Ferguson) only complicated the ways it was received. This essay argues that the Till tree is positioned within a "treescape memory" field that fails to resolve the question of how to remember Till and to reconcile his meaning for contemporary contexts of violence.