President Joe Biden plans to create a national monument honoring Emmett Till, a Black teenager who was lynched in 1955 in Mississippi, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, a White House official said.
On Tuesday (July 25), Biden is set to sign a proclamation on what would have been Till’s 82nd birthday, per BBC News. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will be established and include three different sites in Illinois and Mississippi.
The Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where people gathered to mourn the 1955 death of Till, will be one of the sites dedicated to Till and his mother. The national monument will also include Mississippi’s Graball Landing, which is where many believe Till’s body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. The third site of the monument will be the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where Till’s murderers were tried and acquitted.
According to the White House, 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.”
In 1955, Carolyn Bryant Donham accused Till of grabbing her at a Mississippi store. Till’s relative witnessed their interaction and said the 14-year-old only whistled at her.
Two days later, Donham’s husband Roy Bryant and half-brother J.W. Milam showed up at Till’s great uncle’s house loaded with firearms and abducted the teen. Till’s body was soon after found mangled in the river.
The two men set off by Donham were acquitted of murder and never indicted on kidnapping charges. A grand jury declined to prosecute Donham last year for her role in Till’s lynching. She died at 88 in April.
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