CNN
—
President Joe Biden plans to name a new national monument next week after Emmett Till, a White House official told CNN, honoring the black teenager whose 1955 killing helped galvanize the civil rights movement.
Biden will designate the monument on Tuesday, which would have been Till’s 82nd birthday.
“The new monument will protect the sites that tell the story of Emmett Till’s too-short life and racially motivated murder, the wrongful acquittal of his killers, and the activism of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who courageously brought the brutal injustices and racism of the era to the world’s attention, catalyzing a White House civil rights official.”
The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will focus on Illinois and Mississippi, the states where Till was from and where he died, respectively.
A 14-year-old from Chicago, Till was visiting family in Mississippi when he was beaten and shot to death for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Till’s mother had insisted on an open casket funeral so visitors could view her son’s body, mutilated beyond recognition, a decision that helped fuel the civil rights movement.
The designation comes amid a national debate over how to teach painful facts about American history in public schools. Some Republican-led states have enacted new standards that critics say sanitize history, including the realities of slavery and racist violence.
The Biden administration has shown a new willingness to roll back these new policies. Vice President Kamala Harris made a last-minute trip to Florida on Friday to respond to new state education guidelines that, in part, require high school students to include “how slaves developed skills that, in some cases, could be applied to their personal benefit.” The guidelines also mention acts of violence “against and for” African Americans.
The new memorial will span three separate sites, the official said, including Roberts Temple Church of God on Chicago’s South Side, the site of Till’s funeral.
There will be two additional sites in Mississippi: Graball Landing, which is believed to be where Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, where an all-white jury acquitted Till’s killers.
“The designation reflects the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to advance civil rights and a commitment to protecting places that help tell a more complete story of our nation’s history,” the official said.
