State Rep. Kimberly du Buclet, D-Chicago, is applauding President Joe Biden’s announcement this week that new national monuments will honor the lives of Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley at significant sites in Chicago and Mississippi.
“It is long past due that we dedicate space to reflect on the injustice perpetrated against Emmett Till and the countless victims of Jim Crow throughout our history, and to honor how Mamie Till-Mobley resolved to turn her grief into historic change,” said du Buclet. “The world must never forget what happened to Emmett nearly 70 years ago. His brutal murder opened the eyes of many to the injustices facing the Black community, and his mother’s courage in choosing to host an open-casket funeral ensured that people around the world would bear witness to the horrors facing Black Americans.”
du Buclet, who represents the Bronzeville community where one of the monuments will be located, is applauding Biden’s July 25 announcement, on what would have been Till’s 82 birthday. Biden signed a proclamation urging the federal government to collaborate and establish a new national monument honoring Till and his mother.
The three-part monument will include a commemorative site at Chicago’s Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, where Till-Mobley held her son’s open-casket funeral to show the world the horrors of lynching. Memorials will also be erected in Mississippi at Graball Landing, where Till’s body was found, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where his murders were acquitted despite later admitting to the killing. The three-part monument will tell the story of Emmet’s murder, the struggle to bring guilty parties to justice, and the funeral that shocked the world.
“Mamie Till-Mobley’s strength in choosing to do what she did reinvigorated the civil rights movement with such fervor that many cited his death and images of his body as inspiration for joining the movement,” said du Buclet. “Just last year, the president signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. I think this is the perfect follow-up to that.”
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