This coming Thursday, Loyola University Chicago's Black alumni board will hold a special birthday celebration for Chicago civil rights icon Mamie Till-Mobley, who would have turned 104 years old this month.

The celebration will be at an art exhibit that uniquely captures Till-Mobley's story.

Chicago artist Richard Hunt, who died in December 2023 at the age of 88, has many prominent works — including a sculpture that graces the façade of the Michael A. Bilandic Building downtown. But "Hero's Head" is a very different sculpture that Hunt created in 1956, after the racially charged murder of Emmett Till.

The Chicago teen was brutally beaten and killed in Mississippi in 1955. Hunt lived near the Till family.

"There aren't many monuments to African Americans who were slain through racial violence and mob violence," said Ross Stanton Jordan, a curator at the Loyola University Museum of Art. "This is Hunt beginning to tackle that issue for himself."

The sculpture commemorating Emmett Till is part of the exhibit, "Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt" at the museum, located at 820 N. Michigan Ave. on the Magnificent Mile.

"'Hero's Head' is really a sculpture that looks somewhat like a portrait of Emmett Till's mutilated body," said Jordan, "but it also in many ways a portrait of the country, the violence that was happening at the time against African Americans."

But there is also another statue at the exhibit inspired by the Till family that is more uplifting and hopeful. "Hero Ascending" was sculpted almost 70 years later. It was one of Hunt's last works before he passed away.

"It really does remind me of a bird like lifting its wings about to take flight, or a blossoming flower," said Jordan.

"Hero Ascending" was inspired by Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted her son's casket remains open at his funeral. Till-Mobley became a civil rights icon.

"It's about ascending, maybe a spirit, into the sky. It's about ascending as a bird," said Jordan. "It's about transformation as well."

The museum said a larger version of "Hero Ascending" will be installed at the Till home, which is now a landmark.

"It allows for really him to show us like I guess where he's brought himself, and maybe give us a chance to look toward a different kind of future where people we have lost or faced tragedy can really be uplifted and held up," said Jordan.

That thought will live on for generations to come.

Mamie Till-Mobley is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago. She earned a master's degree in education there in 1971.

"Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt" runs through Saturday.