Showing posts with label Emmet Till. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emmet Till. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

President Biden Designates Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument

Today, on what would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday, President Biden will sign a proclamation establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi and Illinois. The new national monument will tell the story of the events surrounding Emmett Till’s murder, their significance in the civil rights movement and American history, and the broader story of Black oppression, survival, and bravery in America.  

The new national monument will be anchored at three historic sites in Chicago, Illinois; Sumner, Mississippi; and just outside of Glendora, Mississippi. These sites are central to Emmett Till’s racially motivated murder in 1955 and the defining events that followed – including the courageous activism and leadership of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. The new national monument will also encourage and enable partnerships between the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, and local communities and organizations to help conserve and interpret a broader network of historic sites that help tell the story of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley.

The nationwide coverage of the horrific lynching of Emmett Till, as well as Mamie Till-Mobley’s courageous efforts to honor her son’s story through education and activism, elevated the broader reality of the injustices and inequality that Black people experienced during the Jim Crow era and helped catalyze the civil rights movement. Mere months following Emmett Till’s murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery city bus. She later cited Emmett Till as the reason she would not acquiesce. 

Today’s designation builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to advance civil rights and racial justice, including through the President’s signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act that codified lynching as a federal hate crime. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument is President Biden’s fourth new national monument, and reflects the Administration’s commitment to protecting places that help tell a more complete story of our nation’s history.

Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will be managed by the National Park Service, and comprises 5.70 acres across three separate historic sites in Illinois and Mississippi. Through the historical objects protected at these sites, the monument tells the story of Emmett Till’s too-short life and murder, the unjust acquittal of his murderers, and the activism of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who courageously brought the world’s attention to the brutal injustices and racism of the time.

While on a trip from his home in Chicago to visit family in the Mississippi Delta in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was accused of making inappropriate advances toward a white female grocery clerk. Emmett Till’s cousins and friends, who were present at the scene, disputed the claim. Four days after the alleged incident, he was pulled from his bed, kidnapped, and brutally murdered by at least two white men. Three days following this abduction, on August 31, 1955, Emmett Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River.


Graball Landing, located just outside of Glendora, Mississippi, is one of the three sites preserved by the new national monument. Graball Landing is believed to be the site where Emmett Till’s body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. In 2008, the community installed a memorial sign that has been removed or vandalized multiple times since it was first erected. The most recent version of the sign – dedicated in October 2019 – is over an inch thick and bulletproof.

Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, is the second monument site. The church is where on September 3, 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley held an open-casket funeral service for her son in defiance of directives from Mississippi authorities that Emmett Till be buried quickly in Mississippi. Over the course of several days, as many as 125,000 people attended the visitation and funeral services to mourn Emmett Till and bear witness.

The third monument site is the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi where the trial of Emmett Till’s murderers began on September 19, 1955 in a segregated courtroom. An all-white jury wrongfully acquitted Emmett Till’s two killers after just over an hour of deliberation. Both killers later admitted their crimes to a leading magazine in an interview for which they were paid. No one was ever held legally accountable for Emmett Till’s death.

In addition to designating the three sites as a new national monument, today’s proclamation directs the National Park Service to develop a plan in consultation with local communities, organizations, and the public to support the interpretation and preservation of other key sites in Mississippi and Illinois that help tell the story of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley. This may include the Glendora Cotton Gin (currently known as the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center), Mound Bayou, the Tutwiler Funeral Home, and the Emmett Till Boyhood Home.

Today’s designation honors the tireless efforts of Emmett Till’s family, community and civil rights leaders, and local, state, and federal elected officials to ensure that these sites are protected and that Emmett Till’s story continues to be told. In the lead up to the designation, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory visited the sites and met with community members to learn about their vision on how to best educate the public about not only the brutal lynching of Emmett Till, but how the events surrounding his death helped to dismantle Jim Crow and served as a turning point in the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

Background on Antiquities Act Designations

President Theodore Roosevelt first used the Antiquities Act in 1906 to designate Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. Since then, 18 presidents of both parties have used this authority to protect unique natural and historic features in America, including the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, Stonewall National Monument, and the César E. Chávez National Monument.


The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument is President Biden’s fourth new monument designation, following the creation of the Castner Range National Monument in Texas and Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada this spring, and Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado last fall.

Friday, July 22, 2022

Emmett Till’s House among African American Historical Sites to Get Landmarks Funds

Emmett Till left his mother’s house on Chicago’s South Side in 1955 to visit relatives in Mississippi, where the Black teenager was abducted and brutally slain for reportedly whistling at a white woman.

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a cultural preservation organization announced Tuesday that the house will receive a share of $3 million in grants being distributed to 33 sites and organizations nationwide that are important pieces of African American history.

Till’s brutal slaying helped galvanize the civil rights movement. The Chicago home where Mamie Till Mobley and her son lived will receive funding for a project director to oversee restoration efforts, including renovating the second floor to what it looked like when the Tills lived there.

“This house is a sacred treasure from our perspective and our goal is to restore it and reinvent it as an international heritage pilgrimage destination,” said Naomi Davis, executive director of Blacks in Green, a local nonprofit group that bought the house in 2020. She said the plan is to time the 2025 opening with that of the Obama Presidential Library a few miles away.

Leggs said it is particularly important to do something that shines a light on Mamie Till Mobley. After her 14-year-old son’s lynching, Till Mobley insisted that his body be displayed in an open casket as it looked when it was pulled from a river, to show the world what racism looked like.

The house and the story of the casket highlight the risks that the remnants of such history can vanish if not protected. As recently as 2019 when it was sold to a developer, the red brick Victorian house built more than a century earlier was falling into disrepair before it was granted landmark status by the city of Chicago. And the glass-topped casket that held Till’s remains was only donated to the Smithsonian Institution because it was discovered in 2009 rusting in a shed at a suburban Chicago cemetery where it was discarded after the teen’s body was exhumed years earlier.

That discovery of the casket, which only happened because of a scandal at the cemetery, underscores how easily significant pieces of history can simply vanish, said Annie Wright, whose late husband, Simeon, was sleeping with his cousin, Emmett, the night he was abducted.

“We got to remember what happened and if we don’t tell it, if people don’t see (the house) they’ll forget and we don’t want to forget tragedy in these United States,” said Wright, 76.

[SOURCE: WTTW]

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Watch bill signing ceremony for the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act

On Tuesday President Biden signed the Emmet Till Anti-lynching Act making lynching a federal hate crime, which came after Congress failed more than 200 times to pass anti-lynching legislation. Watch Mr. Biden sign the bill and then watch as he and Vice President Kamala Harris make remarks about the signing.

Monday, March 07, 2022

Sen. Cory Booker statement on Senate Passage of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act

U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) issued the following statement on U.S. Senate Passage of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act:

“After 200 failed attempts and over a century’s worth of efforts, I am proud to say that Congress has finally passed legislation to criminalize lynching, a shameful instrument of terror used to intimidate and oppress Black Americans. During the 19th and 20th centuries, more than 4,000 African-American men, women, and children were lynched and between 1936 and 1938, the national headquarters of the NAACP hung a flag with the words ‘A man was lynched yesterday’, solemn reminders of the dark eddies of our nation’s past. Although no legislation will reverse the pain and fear felt by those victims, their loved ones, and Black communities, this legislation is a necessary step America must take to heal from the racialized violence that has permeated its history.

“I first introduced legislation to make lynching a federal crime in 2018. Over the years, I have been proud to work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure this bill passes Congress and heads to the President’s desk. The bipartisan support this bill has achieved underscores the importance of meeting this moment, of reckoning with the past, and of finally being able to say that we did the right thing.”

In 2018, Booker and then-Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) first introduced antilynching legislation and subsequently helped lead its unanimous passage in February 2019. After the effort stalled, Booker reintroduced the Emmett Till Antilynching Act last month to create a specific offense for lynching under existing federal hate crime statues.

In 1900, Congressman George Henry White of North Carolina introduced the first of what would ultimately become a series of more than 200 congressional bills that attempted to make a federal crime. Ninety members of the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan resolution in 2005 apologizing to the victims of lynching for the repeated failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation. These senators expressed their deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States.

Full text of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act can be found here. The legislation is supported by: Equal Justice Initiative, The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Action Network, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Black Women’s Roundtable, Anti-Defamation League, and the National Urban League.

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Congressional Gold Medal to be awarded posthumously to Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley

The Senate has passed a bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager murdered by white supremacists in the 1950s, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted on an open casket funeral to demonstrate the brutality of his killing.

Till was abducted, tortured and killed after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman in Mississippi, a scenario contradicted by others who were with Till at the time.

The killing galvanized the civil rights movement after Till’s mother insisted on an open casket and Jet magazine published photos of his brutalized body.

Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J. and Richard Burr, R-N.C., introduced the bill to honor Till and his mother with the highest civilian honor that Congress awards. They described the legislation as a long overdue recognition of what the Till family endured and what they accomplished in their fight against injustice.

“At the age of 14, Emmett Till was abducted and lynched at the hands of white supremacists. His gruesome murder still serves as a solemn reminder of the terror and violence experienced by Black Americans throughout our nation’s history,” said Sen. Booker. “The courage and activism demonstrated by Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, in displaying to the world the brutality endured by her son helped awaken the nation’s conscience, forcing America to reckon with its failure to address racism and the glaring injustices that stem from such hatred. More than six decades after his murder, I am proud to see the Senate pass long-overdue legislation that would award the Congressional Gold Medal to both Emmett and Mamie Till-Mobley in recognition of their profound contributions to our nation.”

The House version of the legislation is sponsored by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill.

Tuesday, November 05, 2019

Rep. Bennie Thompson statement on the white supremacy group gathering at the Emmett Till Memorial

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS 2nd District) released a statement regarding the white supremacy group gathering at the Emmett Till Memorial.

“The fact that people are still attempting to sow division in Mississippi is sad. This the only memorial in America that has to be bulletproof. In the past, the signs have been stolen, thrown in the river. The vandalism has been targeted, and it has been persistent. The signs were placed near the spot where Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in 1955. The 14-year-old African American was tortured and killed by two white men after false accusations that he flirted with a white woman. His death became an important catalyst in the civil rights movement. Those who continue to deface this memorial are saying to the world that Till’s death was justified. Unfortunately, being stupid and racist is not a crime. However, their symbols of hate portrayed at the Emmett Till memorial continues to put Missississippi in a bad light and is further proof that we still have a long way to go in the fight for racial justice.”

VIDEO OF WHITE SUPREMACIST GATHERING AT EMMETT TILL MEMORIAL

Saturday, October 19, 2019

New Emmett Till bullet proof marker dedicated to replace vandalized sign

A new bulletproof memorial to Emmett Till was dedicated Saturday in Mississippi after previous historical markers were repeatedly vandalized.

Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, said the new marker was dedicated Saturday.

Members of Till's family, including two of Till's cousins, attended the ceremony at the site where the teen's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River.

This is the fourth historical marker at the site. Previous ones became a target for vandals.

The first historical marker was placed in 2008. Someone tossed it in the river. The second and third signs were shot at and left riddled with bullet holes.

The new 500-pound (225-kilogram) steel sign has a glass bulletproof front, Weems said.

[SOURCE: AP]