Emmett Till

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Source: MANDEL NGAN / Getty
President Joe Biden is set to establish a national monument to honor the late Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
President Biden is signing a proclamation Tuesday (July 25) to create the monuments at the White House. The signing comes on the 82nd anniversary of the teenager’s birth. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will consist of three protected sites honoring the family in Illinois, where Emmett was born and raised, and in Mississippi where he was lynched in 1955 at the age of 14 after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham.

The first site is the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago. The church is where Till’s funeral was held in September 1955. Ms. Till-Mobley insisted on her son’s casket being opened to show his mutilated body, shocking the 1,700 attendees and the world. The moment is credited as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement’s progress through the late 1950s and 1960s.
The other two sites are in Mississippi. Graball Landing in Tallahatchie County is believed to be the site where Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. The site is notable for having a sign placed at it in 2008 but needing to be replaced after multiple instances of vandalism. A new bulletproof sign detailing that history and what happened now stands there. The third site is the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where Till’s killers Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury.
The proclamation comes amidst an explosive divisive political battle currently going on nationwide that seeks to restrict how Black history in America is being taught in schools. Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is squarely in the middle, as Florida education officials introduced new standards saying “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” That drew a scathing rebuke from Vice President Kamala Harris, who said in a recent speech that “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it.”

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