![]() Yet her case didn’t have the same kind of national attention and staying power-at the time, the media often got her name wrong, misspelling it as “Jo Etha.” Her killing, and the subsequent court proceedings, did briefly galvanize civil-rights activists during the 1970s, but her story has since faded from the public imagination. As she fell to the pavement, newspapers reported, she was still clutching her high-school diploma.Ĭollier lived close to the place where Emmett Till had been lynched 16 years earlier. Graduation night was meant to be the beginning of her climb. She wanted to help lift her family out of poverty, haul them out of Drew to someplace better. Joetha was heading to Mississippi Valley State, a historically Black college nearby, on a scholarship. She and her friends had gathered to celebrate her class’s graduation that day from Drew High School-a formerly all-white school that she had helped integrate. There is only one shot, but it finds the young woman’s neck. Inside are three white men who have been drinking beer by the quart. At this moment, she is chatting with friends near Eddie’s and Susie’s Cafe, a popular hangout, at the end of a day of celebration.Ī car is cruising down Union Street, toward the café. She is a teenager, thin, pretty, and dark-skinned, with straight black hair and thick bangs. A young Black woman stands on Union Street in a yellow dress. ![]() It is late evening on Tuesday, May 25, 1971, in Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the small Delta town of Drew. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. ![]()
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