President Joe Biden is set to establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955, on Tuesday — the date Till would have turned 82.
According to the Associated Press, the president will sign a proclamation to create the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi.
The Mississippi locations are Graball Landing and Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse. Graball Landing is where the 14-year-old’s body is believed to have been pulled from the Tallahatchie River. Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner is where Till’s accused killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were tried and acquitted.
The Illinois site is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. In 1955, thousands of people gathered at the church to mourn the death of the teenager.
Over six decades ago, Till was staying with relatives in the small town of Money when he was accused of whistling at Carolyn Bryant Donham, a white woman. When told of Till’s purported actions, Donham’s husband and his half-brother beat and tortured the teen until he died from a gunshot to the head.
The young man’s death has fueled a civil rights movement that has lasted for decades with his renewed case being closed once again in December 2021, leaving Donham free of any charges.
