The last surviving witness to the shocking 1955 lynching of Emmett Till will speak in Davenport next weekend.

Mount Sinai Christian Fellowship COGIC will present a “Black History Month Worship Experience” on March 25th at 4 p.m., featuring guest speaker Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., at Mount Sinai Christian Fellowship, 4706 Northwest Blvd., Davenport.

Rev. Parker, a dynamic speaker and pivotal figure in the fight for equality, recently released his new memoir, “A Few Days Full of Trouble,” where he shares his recollections of growing up with his cousin and best friend, Emmett Till; critical insights into the recent investigation surrounding Emmett’s murder, and powerful lessons on racial reckoning, according to a Monday news release.

Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., a cousin of Emmett Till, speaks at a press conference held at Medill School of Journalism on Dec. 6, 2021 in Chicago. The family of Emmett Till addressed the final investigation report, recently closed by the FBI, of the lynching of Till in 1955. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

Attendees can expect a powerful and transformative worship experience set to honor our Black history and legacy while optimistically looking ahead, the release says.

“It is my hope that guests will walk away understanding where we came from, how we got here, and the action needed to spark a change,” says Rev. Parker. “We are at a pivotal moment as Black people living in this nation.”

His January 2023 memoir (co-authored with Christopher Benson) relates how Emmett’s lynching in Mississippi at age 14 ignited a fire in the civil rights movement. The Black boy, on vacation from Chicago, was abducted, tortured, and lynched after being accused of offending a white woman.

A portrait of Emmett Louis Till, a black 14-year-old Chicago boy, whose weighted down body was found in the Tallahatchie River near the Delta community of Money, Mississippi, Aug. 31, 1955. Local residents Roy Bryant, 24, and J.W. Milam, 35, were accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering Till for allegedly whistling at Bryant’s wife. A team searching the basement of a Mississippi courthouse for evidence about the lynching found the unserved warrant in June 2022 charging a white woman in his kidnapping in 1955, and relatives of the victim want authorities to finally arrest her nearly 70 years later. (AP Photo, File)

In the new book, Parker (Emmett’s cousin and best friend) relates how he himself was a survivor of the night of terror when young Emmett was taken from his family’s rural Mississippi Delta home in the dead of night.

“In a hypnotic interplay between uncovered facts and vivid recall, Rev. Parker offers an emotional and suspenseful page-turner, set against a backdrop of reporting errors and manipulations, racial reckoning, and political pushback—and he does so accompanied by never-before-seen findings in the investigation, the soft resurrection of memory, and the battle-tested courage of faith,” according to the synopsis for the book’s Amazon page.

“A Few Days Full of Trouble is a powerful work of truth-telling, a gift to readers looking to reconcile the weight of the past with a hope for the future,” it says.

For more information on Mt. Sinai Christian Fellowship, visit its website HERE.