(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — President Joe Biden established a national monument memorializing part of Chicago's painful history on Tuesday. It honors Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley.
Biden signed the proclamation, which created the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Illinois and Mississippi, on what would have been Emmett Till's 82nd birthday.
At the White House for the signing: Rev. Wheeler Parker, who was 16 years old when Till — his 14-year-old cousin — was brutally killed in Mississippi in 1955.
“It has been quite a journey for me from the darkness to the light, when I sat with my family on the night of terror, when Emmett Till, our beloved Bobo, was taken from us,” Parker said.
It was the summer of 1955 when Till-Mobley put her son, Emmett, on a train to her native Mississippi, where he was to spend time with his uncle and his cousins. In the overnight hours of Aug. 28, 1955, Emmett was taken from his uncle’s home at gunpoint by two vengeful white men.
Emmett’s alleged crime? Flirting with the wife of one of his kidnappers.
Three days later, a fisherman on the Tallahatchie River discovered the teenager’s bloated corpse — one of his eyes was detached, an ear was missing, his head was shot and bashed in.
Biden spoke of the courage of Till-Mobley, who insisted on an open casket for her son.
“My God, all of us who've lost children in other ways — how hard it is even to close the casket or keep it open,” he said. “What a debate it is. But to see the child that had been maimed … and the country and the world saw.”
One location for the monument is the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, the Bronzeville site of Emmett's funeral.
“At a time when there are those who seek to ban books [and] bury history, we're making it clear, crystal clear,” Biden said.
Parker said following his cousin’s death, he could never imagine a moment like what he experienced at Tuesday’s ceremony, which described as “standing in the light of wisdom, grace and deliverance.”
“From a time when we lived in fear to a time when [the] president and vice president gave us this great hope,” he said. “They kept their promise by delivering … this is what America means to me. Promises made, promises kept.”
Emmett’s family members, along with a national organization seeking to preserve Black cultural heritage sites, said their work protecting the Till legacy continues. They hope to raise money to restore the sites and develop educational programming to support their inclusion in the National Park System.
Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said the federal designation is a milestone in a yearslong effort to preserve and protect places tied to events that have shaped the nation and that symbolize national wounds.
“We believe that not until Black history matters will Black lives and Black bodies matter,” he said. “Through reckoning with America’s racist past, we have the opportunity to heal.”
The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has provided $750,000 in grant funding since 2017 to help rescue sites important to the Till legacy. With its partners, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Lilly Endowment Inc., Leggs said an additional $5 million in funding has been secured for specialized preservation of the sites.
Biden’s proclamation protects places that are central to the story of Emmett’s life and death, the acquittal of his white killers by an all-white jury and his late mother’s activism.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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