CHICAGO — Of the many people whose lives still cast shadows on our history, one of them is that of a little boy, a 14-year-old named Emmett Till who left Chicago full of playful life and returned, as his mother, Mamie, said in 1955, “in a pine box, so horribly battered and waterlogged that someone needed to tell you this sickening sight is your son.”

I hope you know at least some of the details of that boy’s life. I have written about him before, many have, but there are good reasons to do so again, for it is now possible to meet him and learn his sad story in two powerful ways.

On Nov. 23, the Chicago History Museum is opening a new exhibition, “Injustice: The Trial for the Murder of Emmett Till.” It will feature photographs of the youngster’s life in Chicago, his funeral and original courtroom sketches of the trial.

That trial was a sham. Two men — Roy Bryant, owner of Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market and the husband of the woman at whom Till supposedly aimed his whistle, and his half-brother, a hulking, 235-pound World War II veteran named J.W. Milam — were first charged with kidnapping. That became murder after the teenager’s dead body was found.

Neither Bryant nor Milam testified during a trial that lasted five days. In closing arguments, defense attorney Sidney Carlton told the jurors that if they did not acquit Bryant and Milam, “Your ancestors will turn over in their grave.”

The all-white, all-male jury (nine farmers, two carpenters and an insurance agent) deliberated for only 67 minutes. Reporters said they heard laughter inside the jury room. The verdict? Not guilty. One juror later told reporters, “We wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t stopped to drink pop.”

The outrage at the verdict was expressed in headlines across the globe, in part because more than 100 reporters were there, from Chicago, across the country and from Europe. One of them was future Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam, who covered the story for a small Mississippi paper. He would come to believe that the murder/trial were “the first great media events of the civil rights movement,” and “at last (could galvanize) the national press corps, and eventually, the nation.”

It should be noted that before the year was out, Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, this compelled a young pastor named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to call for a boycott of the city-owned bus company.

Another person in the courtroom during the trial was Chicago’s Franklin McMahon, who documented the proceedings in drawings that appeared in Life magazine. His stunning art is among the highlights of the museum show.

Know too that there is a new book that devotes some of its nearly 300 pages to Till but also to the larger sham of American racism. Its title says a great deal, “Ghosts of Segregation: American Racism, Hidden in Plain Sight” (Celadon Books). It is the work of former Chicagoan Richard Frishman, who traveled more than 35,000 miles across America over five years capturing with his camera such things as once-segregated bathrooms, beaches, churches, hospitals, graves and hotels.

In Chicago, he photographed the Dan Ryan Expressway; the Sunset Café, a prominent “Black and Tan” jazz club; as well as the site of the outbreak of the 1919 race riot. He also photographed Bryant’s Grocery, where Emmett’s story began, and the Black Bayou Bridge across the Tallahatchie River, where his dead body was found.

Frishman’s photos are captivating and thought-provoking. The book is beautiful in a haunting way and that was one of Frishman’s aims. In the book, he writes, “Look carefully. These photographs are evidence that structures of segregation and racist ideology are still standing in contemporary America. Our tribal instincts continue to build barriers to protect ourselves from people perceived as ‘other’ while overlooking our shared humanity.”

Critic Hilton Als has praised the book, writing, “Throughout (the book) the heart and mind are full to bursting with depth of feeling and depth of thought. I can’t imagine a more beautiful creation.”

When Emmett Till’s body was returned to Chicago, to the A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home, with services held at the Roberts Temple Church of God, his mother made the brave decision to allow Jet magazine to publish a photo of the mutilated corpse and also decided to have a open casket, and so tens of thousands saw Emmett’s battered body. Some people prayed, some fainted and all, men, women and children, wept.

Now nearly 70 years later, Frishman tells me, “I am on a mission to open peoples’ eyes to the hidden and living legacies that surround us. History does not repeat itself; we repeat history.”

rkogan@chicagotribune.com

I met Al Pacino one September afternoon long ago at the wedding of David Mamet and Rebecca Pidgeon at a place called Stillington Hall in Gloucester, Massachusetts, about an hour’s drive northeast of Boston. As the family gathered for pictures under a huge tree on the lawn, Pacino said, “C’mon, let’s get in on the pictures,” to me and to his female companion, who said, “Stop kidding around, will you?”

Now, some 33 years later, I have encountered him again, on the 370 pages of his spirited autobiography “Sonny Boy,” and he is not kidding here when he provides a thoughtfully introspective but also oddly remote journey that begins with his childhood in a South Bronx tenement.

His teenage parents split up before he was two and he was raised primarily by his paternal grandmother who, Pacino writes, “was probably the most wonderful person I’ve ever known in my life.” His mother, “fragile and uncontrollable,” had mental health troubles that had her undergoing electroshock treatments, attempting suicide when he was six and dying of a drug overdose when he was 22.

It is her instability and frequent absences that shadowed Pacino as he and his best pals — Cliffy, Bruce and Petey — flirt with antics that spoke of bigger crimes, but his family kept a tight rein, “away from the path that led to delinquency, danger and violence.” He gave up dreams of playing professional baseball and discovered theater, where being in a school play “made me part of something. … I actually was whole.” He was still on that path a few years later when “one night, onstage, just like that, it happened. …I want to do this forever.”

It was a struggle to get started but enjoyable to read of his on-a-shoestring formative years, highlighted by his meeting Charlie Laughton, not the famous actor, but a teacher and actor who would become Pacino’s friend and essential mentor. They met in a bar and these years, as Pacino frankly details, were soaked in booze. Working odd jobs, rooming with another young unknown named Martin Sheen, acting in all manner of downtown Manhattan spaces, Pacino drank hard, believing that “drinking saved my life. … Happy drunk. Sad drunk. Always drunk. And that’s the actor’s life. … I would drink at night and pop pills the next day to calm down.”

This went on for some raucous time, until he stopped in the late 1970s, prodded by Laughton and aided by AA, some therapists and a relationship with actress Marthe Keller.

Many pages later he answers an unasked question, writing, “Of course, there’s the general belief that I’m a cocaine addict, or was one. It may surprise you that I’ve never touched the stuff.” No, he just played one in “Scarface,” a film he made while also starring on stage in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.”

Pacino does not offer commentary on all of his plays and films and that’s fine. There have been far too many to mention. But he gives us stories from a lot of them — the “Godfather” trio, “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico,” “Scarface,” Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” which earned him Oscar nominations but only one win, an Academy Award for best actor for his over-the-top role in “Scent of a Woman.” Some tales and anecdotes will be familiar to those of you who partake of late-night talk shows on which Pacino has been a frequent and lively guest.

Those coming to “Sonny Boy” seeking the sort of dirt and scandal that pepper so many celebrity books will be disappointed. Pacino is a gentleman throughout and admirable for that.

You may not have known that Pacino has never been married but you are right to assume that he has not lacked for female companionship, writing, “I have always liked women, but from the time I was very young, I have been shy around them.” He conquered that shyness with such girlfriends as Jill Clayburgh, Diane Keaton, the aforementioned Keller, some others you’ve never heard of.

You get but the briefest mention of his four children, two with Beverly D’Angelo (Olivia and Anton), about whom he writes “(we) had our issues about where to live” and a bit later, “We were working through the whole gestalt of raising our kids without each other.” That’s it.

Women and kids were never a priority in this life and he has known that for a long time. As he writes, “I could see a pattern already starting in me, some innate understanding that work is work, and romance and life come second.”

He has never been a careful man so you may get only a mild shock when he writes, “I was broke. I had fifty million dollars, and then I had nothing. … The kind of money I was spending and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss.”

This book was written with what Pacino calls the “commitment and energy … and considerable help and persistence” of Dave Itzkoff, a former New York Times culture reporter and the author of a fine biography of Robin Williams titled simply “Robin.” (I will tell you that I have never been a fan of audiobooks but listening to Pacino read one this is a joy).

Pacino realizes his good fortune, writing, “I have always needed someone to take care of me,” and knowing he’s been lucky in finding them. And while father figures abound, the shadow of loss hangs heavy, as he eulogizes those  pals Cliffy, Bruce and Petey, their lives lost to drugs, with a poem.

Pacino is 84 years old and writes, near the book’s end, “I look in the mirror and I see something looking back at me that looks like and old wolf with a snarl and a mountain of white hair.” And some pages later, “This life is a dream. … I think the saddest part about dying is that you lose your memories. Memories are like wings: they keep you flying, like a bird on the wind.”

Were I to ever meet him again, I’d say, “Thanks for sharing.”

rkogan@chicagotribune.com