Biden will create national monument honoring Emmett Till

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is expected to establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose murder in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement, and his mother, according to published reports.

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According to The Associated Press, Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday, which would have been Till’s 82nd birthday, to create the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi.

“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 told CNN.

Emmett Till died Aug. 28, 1955, in Drew, Mississippi. He was 14 when he was accused of whistling at a white woman. He was abducted, tortured and killed.

The teen’s mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral, so visitors could see his mutilated body.

“Let them see what I have seen,” Mamie Till-Mobley said, according to the Chicago Defender.

The outcry of the gruesome murder helped galvanize the civil rights movement.

The monument to Till and his mother will include Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, according to the AP. It was the site of Emmett Till’s funeral, CNN reported.

In Mississippi, the monument will include Graball Landing, where Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. The third site is the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Till’s accused killers were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, according to the news organization.

“The designation reflects the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to advance civil rights and commitment to protecting places that help tell a more complete story of our nation’s history,” the official told CNN.

Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose accusation led to Emmett Till’s death, died on April 25, 2023, according to Mississippi Today and CNN. She was 88.

Donham was 21 when she accused the teen of touching her hand, grabbing her by the waist and making sexual advances toward her as he and others left the grocery store that she and her then-husband owned, according to the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation. He was kidnapped four days later at gunpoint and his body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River.

Donham’s then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were acquitted of charges in Till’s death but later confessed in a magazine interview, according to the AP.

A grand jury in Mississippi decided in August 2022 not to indict Donham, the news organization reported.

An unserved arrest warrant for Donham was discovered in June 2022 in the basement of the Leflore county courthouse.