A White House representative announced on Saturday that Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley will each get a national monument from US President Joe Biden.
Till was a Black teen from Chicago who was slain in 1955 after being kidnapped, tortured, and accused of whistling at a White woman in Mississippi.
On Tuesday, Biden will formally establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, which will span three locations in Illinois and Mississippi.
The date of Emmett Till’s 1941 birth is this Tuesday.
the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement
The 14-year-old was accused of whistling and making approaches toward Caroline Bryant Donham as she was working in a store in the sleepy town of Money by Caroline Bryant Donham. Till was at the time visiting family in Mississippi.
Till was later kidnapped, and after being shot and weighted down, he was thrown into the Tallahatchie River, where his body was eventually recovered.
About a month after Till was slain, two White men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were prosecuted for murder, but a Mississippi jury comprised entirely of White people found them not guilty. They admitted to killing Till in a paid interview with Look magazine many months later. Donham and Bryant wed in 1955. Early this year, she passed away.
The Civil Rights Movement was sparked by Till’s mother’s demand on an open coffin to demonstrate to the world how her son had been mistreated and Jet’s magazine’s decision to publish images of his dismembered body.
Honoring Emmett Till
The monument will be the fourth one Biden has erected in honor of the younger Till since taking office in 2021.
This year, for Black History Month, Biden hosted a showing of the drama “Till,” which is based on his lynching.
Biden authorized the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act in March 2022. Such legislation was first debated by Congress more than 120 years ago.
The Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, located in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, will be protected by the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. These locations are crucial to the story of Till’s life and death at the age of 14, the conviction of his white killers, and his mother’s activism. In September 1955, a large crowd gathered at the chapel to mourn Emmett Till.
The places in Mississippi include Graball Landing, thought to be the spot where Till’s dismembered body was removed from the Tallahatchie River, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, where Till’s killers were tried and found not guilty by a jury of only white people.
In December 2021, the Justice Department declared that it was wrapping up its inquiry into Till’s murder.
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