Biden will Create a National Monument Honoring Emmett Till

Emmett Till

By: Joshua Martin

On what would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday, President Biden will honor the late teenager who’s murder was a catalyst for the civil-rights movement. President Biden will sign a proclamation Tuesday forming the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument which embodies the decades of civil rights work of Till’s mother, who continuously fought for equality for Black Americans following her son’s murder. 

Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam was tried on murder charges about a month after Till was killed, but an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them. Months later, they confessed to killing Till in an interview with Look magazine. 

The monument locations will consist of a site in Chicago, where Till was born and two sites in rural Mississippi, where he traveled to spend time with his family. The Illinois site is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, where thousands of people gathered at the church to mourn Emmett Till in September of 1955.

The Mississippi sites are Graball Landing, where Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Till’s killers were acquitted by an all white jury. 

Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when Carolyn Bryant Donham accused the 14-year-old Till made sexual advances at her while she worked in a store in the small community of Money, Ms. Till would be later abducted by Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam 

The two men were tried on murder charges about a month after Till was killed, but an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them. Months later, they confessed to killing Till in an interview with Look magazine. Carolyn Bryant died earlier this year.

The new monument will protect places that tell the story of Emmett Till's too-short life and racially-motivated murder, the unjust acquittal of his murderers, and the activism of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who courageously brought the world's attention to the brutal injustices and racism of the time, catalyzing the civil-rights movement',” a White House official said in a statement.

Last December, Congress voted to award the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to Till and his mother. For Black History Month this year, Biden hosted a screening of the movie “Till,” a drama about his lynching. In March the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was signed into law, which made lynching a federal hate crime for the first time in US history. 

---

YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:

SHARE TO SOCIAL MEDIA