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U.S. President Biden signed a proclamation on Tuesday, July 25, establishing a national monument dedicated to Emmett Till, a 14-year-old who was murdered in a racially-motivated attack in 1955.
The monument is also dedicated to Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, whose activism is considered a driving force behind the American Civil Rights movement.
Till was a Black teenager from Chicago, Illinois, who was tortured and lynched by three white men after witnesses accused him of whistling at a white woman while he was visiting relatives in the southern state of Mississippi The men were acquitted of murder charges by an all-white jury in 1955, and two of them later confessed to killing Till in a paid interview with Look Magazine.
The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument was established on July 25, 2023, on what would have been Till’s 82nd birthday.
The monument will span three protected sites in Illinois, where Emmett was born and in Mississippi, where his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. The third site is the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Till’s killers were acquitted.
Till’s mother insisted on an open casket and allowed Jet magazine to publish photos of Emmett’s disfigured body, which, along with the men’s acquittal, shocked the nation and helped ignite the U.S. Civil Rights movement.
Carolyn Bryant, the white woman at the center of the attack, allegedly recanted her testimony that Till had touched and harassed her, during an interview with a historian working on a book about the case in 2017.
（CGTN）
