The HBO series Lovecraft Country just premiered three weeks ago, but it’s already shaping up to be one of TV’s most incisive portrayals of the evils of our country’s racist history. The series follows young Black Korean War vet Atticus Freeman, his Uncle George, and his friend Letitia Lewis as they travel across 1950s Jim Crow America, encountering the twin terrors of white supremacy and Lovecraftian monsters in equal measure.
One of the most impressive aspects of Lovecraft Country is its ability to craft a first-rate horror narrative by juxtaposing real-life threats to Black existence, such as sundown towns, with terrifying mystical creatures. That juxtaposition was particularly notable in the show’s third episode, “Holy Ghost,” which aired on Sunday with a subtle and devastating reference to the lynching of Emmett Till, the Black 14-year-old from Chicago who was brutally murdered by a group of local white men in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman. (The woman in question has since confessed that these claims were false.)
In the episode, a young Black child is seen joining others in playing with an Ouija board while wearing a white shirt and black-and-white striped tie, a haunting visual echo of a widely circulated photo of Till prior to his murder. The child, whose name is Bobo—another echo of Till’s nickname—is seen asking the Ouija board, “Am I going to have a good time on my trip?” Chillingly, the board responds “No”, a possible reference to the fact that Till was murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi.
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It’s all too apropos that Lovecraft Country would feature a reference to Till shortly after the 65th anniversary of his murder: As the recent police shootings of Jacob Blake, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd painfully illustrate, America still has a long way to go in reckoning with its past and present history of white supremacy.