President Biden to Honor Emmett Till With National Monument

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday will establish a national monument encompassing three sites in honor of Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose abduction and murder by White supremacists in 1955 became a defining moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

The monument will also honor Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted that her son’s casket be open at his funeral because, she said, “the whole nation has to bear witness to this.”

Till’s death has long appeared to resonate with the president who hosted a White House screening of the movie “Till” in February.

In remarks before his assembled guests that night, Biden said, “To remember history is to shine a light on the good, the bad, the truth, and who we are as a nation. And our history shows that while darkness and denialism hide very much, they erase nothing. They can’t erase the past, and they shouldn’t.

“Only with truth comes healing and justice and repair and another step forward in the promise we all made but have never reached: a more perfect union. But we’ve never fully given up on it,” the president said.

“That’s why we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know — we have to learn what we should know. We should know everything about our history. That’s what great nations do. And we’re a great nation. And that’s why history matters so much. You know, that’s why this film matters so much,” Biden said.

The president reflected at the same event on his signing The Emmett Till Antilynching Act in 2022, making lynching a federal hate crime.

“That law was more than 100 years in the making,” Biden said. “[Signing] it was an honor. It was one of the great honors of my career.”

Biden also signed a bill that would posthumously award Till and his mother the Congressional Gold Medal, the body’s highest civilian honor.

More than 60 guests are expected to join Biden in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House as he signs the proclamation establishing the monument. The event coincides with what would have been Till’s 82nd birthday.

In addition to Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior administration officials, those invited to attend include members of the Till family, civil rights leaders, historic preservation advocates and members of Congress.

The president will be introduced at the ceremony by the Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr., pastor and district superintendent of the Argo Temple Church of God in Christ in Summit, Illinois, a church built by Alma Carthan, grandmother of Emmett Till. 

Parker was 16 years old when his best friend and younger cousin, Emmett Till, was killed. Now in his 80s, he is the last surviving witness to Emmett Till’s abduction.

Till was killed by a racist mob at the age of 14 after being accused of whistling at a White woman.

The monument itself will include three separate sites in two states, Mississippi and Illinois.

In Illinois the monument will encompass the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side where thousands of people gathered to mourn Till in September 1955.

In Mississippi, the monument will include Graball Landing, which is believed to be the site Till’s brutalized body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. 

The third site is the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Emmett Till’s murderers were tried by an all-White jury and wrongly acquitted.

Tuesday’s event will mark the fourth time Biden has established a national monument since taking office.

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