White House announces national monument to honor Emmett Till

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden signed a proclamation Tuesday establishing a national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, on what would have been Till’s 82nd birthday. 

The brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till back in 1955 served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement after his mother decided to have an open casket funeral so everyone could see what happened to her son. 

“His life mattered -- his life was part of not just his family but his community,” said native Washingtonian, Darlene Simmons. 

Simmons remembers learning about the brutal murder when she was a young girl flipping through pictures in jet magazine. 

“And one was this real handsome boy," she recalls. "I said 'ohhh he’s cute.' And there was another one that showed him all beaten up, his face, and I kept looking at the comparison."

The monument will span across three sites in Mississippi and Illinois, with one located in Chicago where Till was from. Another will be in Graball Landing, Mississippi where Till’s body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River, and the third is at a courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi where Till’s suspected killers were found not guilty. 

"Being able to memorialize Till and the space where that happened…from Chicago all the way down to Mississippi is extraordinary and actually long over due," said Dr. Daniel McMahon, principal at DeMatha Catholic High School.

Dr. McMahon just returned from a summer immersion class where he and nearly a dozen students visited different sites in the south part of the civil rights movement. 

“We went to Memphis and toured the Lorraine motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated," McMahon said. "We drove to Selma, Alabama and there we walked the Edmund Pettus bridge. I think for our kids that may have been the most moving thing that we did because the sidewalk to the bridge is in quite disrepair and no one seems to care how important that is as a historical landmark." 

Dr. McMahon says having a physical marker honoring the story of Emmett Till ensures this dark moment in our nation’s history never falls into the shadows. 

“A country that memorializes places helps you think through the history and keeps it alive for everyone," he said. "A significant part of history that could be lost in the same way when the Edmund Pettus Bridge sidewalks are decaying and eroding what happens if that historical landmark goes away what President Biden is doing is going to pretty much guarantee that Emmett Till and his story and his mother’s story do not go away.”