President Joe Biden will establish a monument to honor Emmett Till, a black teenager tortured and killed in 1955, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
Biden will sign a proclamation endorsing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument on Tuesday. The date marks the 82nd anniversary of Till’s birth.
Till was 14 when he traveled from his hometown of Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives in 1955. Till was accused of flirting with or catcalling Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working in a store.
A few days later, two men abducted Till from his relatives’ home. Roy Bryant, Carolyn Bryant’s husband, and Roy’s half-brother, JW Milam, brutally tortured and killed Till before his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River.
Washington: Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act. Who was Emmett Till and what happened to him?
The monument will take shape on three different sites. One of those sites will include the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, where thousands gathered to mourn Till in 1955.
The other sites will be located in Mississippi. These include Graball Landing, where Till’s body was likely pulled from the Tallahatchie River, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where his killers were acquitted by an all-white jury.
Roy Bryant and Milam later confessed to killing Till in a paid interview.
After her son’s death, Till-Mobley held a large funeral attended by thousands of mourners. Till’s face remained completely unrecognizable, but she allowed the media to release images of her son’s open casket.
The coverage helped shine a light on the violent white supremacy faced by black people in America during the Jim Crow era and fueled the national civil rights movement.
Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act last year.
“Despite being one of the thousands who were lynched… his mother’s courage to show the world what was done to her energized the civil rights movement,” Biden said when signing the legislation last year.
Contributors: Joey Garrison and Orlando Mayorquin, USA TODAY; Associated press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden to approve monument for Emmett Till in Chicago and Mississippi