SUMMIT, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A bronze sculpture of Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of Emmett Till, was unveiled Saturday at her alma mater, Argo Community High School in Summit.
The life-sized work, by sculptor Sonja Henderson, depicts Mamie Till-Mobley standing at a podium.
It was installed outside the entrance to the school. Emmett Till’s relatives — Rev. Wheeler Parker and Thelma Wright-Edwards — spoke during the unveiling ceremony.
“In 1955, we went to Mississippi together, and I came back without him,” Parker said.
Wright-Edwards said people always ask her where she was when she heard the news.
“I was in church — a good place to be,” she said. “I don’t have any animosity in my heart.”
Parker recalled similar words from Mamie Till-Mobley.
“Mamie Till’s reconciliation speech. She made it in 2003,” Parker said. “She said, ‘God took hate out of my life’ … Those people who did this to my son, she said ‘they don’t exist.”
The sculpture includes a quote from Till-Mobley: “Let them see what I have seen.”
It was with those words that she voiced her decision that Emmett Till’s casket would be open, and the world would see the horror of his lynching in Mississippi in 1955.
The event would spark the civil rights movement.
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