National Monuments Honoring Emmett Till to be Established at Three Sites

President Joe Biden is expected to sign a proclamation on Tuesday (July 24) to establish a national monument dedicated to Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. The designation comes in time for what would have been Till’s 82nd birthday, and three monuments in honor of him will be established in three locations across his birthplace of Illinois to Mississipi, where he was lynched in August 1955.

One site will be at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically-Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. 1,700 mourners were inside the church where Till’s funeral service was held in September 1955, while 10,000 more stood outside and listened to the service over loudspeakers. During the funeral, Till-Mobley made the brave decision to keep her son’s casket open, displaying his gruesomely mutilated body.

In Mississippi, another monument will be placed at Graball Landing, “which is believed to be the site where Emmett Till's brutalized body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River," the official reads. The third and final site will be at the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, “where Emmett Till’s murderers were tried by an all-white jury and wrongly acquitted.”

"Emmett and Mamie are finally being recognized for his tragic death and her heroism to allow the world to see his mutilated body in the casket in 1955, which is said to have become the catalyst for the civil rights movement,” Marvel Parker, co-founder of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Institute, told The Washington Post.

In March of last year, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was made effective by Congress. In October 2022, Till and Till-Mobley biopic, Till, was released to critical acclaim. Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who accused Till of making advances towards her, died in April at 88-years-old.