The history of Emmett Till: From lynching to national remembrance

On Tuesday, President Biden signed a proclamation to establish a national monument honoring Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was brutally lynched in Mississippi over 67 years ago. The monument also honors Till’s late mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who dedicated her life to social justice following the death of her only child.

The proclamation to establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monuments marked what would have been Till’s 82nd birthday and will include three federally protected locations in Mississippi and Chicago.

The sites are the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Till’s open-casket funeral was held; an area along Graball Landing near Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River, where his body was found; and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where his murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Biden says he was 12 years old when Till was killed. “I can’t fathom what it must have been like,” he said, adding that he will not be silent about the hard truths of America’s history.

“Only with truth comes healing, justice, repair and another step forward towards a more perfect union,” Biden said.

The White House says the monuments are a reminder that America cannot deny its history and the nation moves toward healing.

“We will be better if we remember, we will be stronger if we remember, because we are all here now. It is only by understanding and learning from our past that we can continue to work together to build a better future,” Vice President Kamala Harris said during the signing.

Here’s a timeline of events that led to the national commemoration of Till and his mother on Tuesday.

August 1955: ‘One of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history’

On Aug. 24, 1955, Till was visiting family in Money, Miss., a town with Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation, when he was accused of wolf-whistling at and grabbing Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who, decades later, recanted her statement.

Four days later, Till “was kidnapped and later murdered,” Davis Houck, professor of rhetorical studies at Florida State University and a leader of the Emmett Till Memory Project, told Yahoo News. “On Aug. 31 his body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River.”

Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam — Carolyn Bryant’s husband and his brother-in-law, respectively — beat Till, shot him in the head and lynched him before his body was thrown into the river.

“Emmett Till's murder is emblematic of one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history,” Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat who represents Till’s home state of Illinois, said in a tweet.

September 1955: ‘Let the people see’

On Sept. 3, 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley held an open-casket funeral in Illinois.

“The brutal nature of Till's murder and the brave decision by his mother for an open casket funeral exposed the harsh racial violence of the South to the world,” Democratic Illinois Rep. Jonathan Jackson tweeted on Tuesday. “His story became a rallying cry for the Civil Rights Movement, compelling many, including leaders like Rosa Parks, into action.”

Over 100,000 people attended Till’s funeral and saw his bruised and beaten body firsthand. Elliott Gorn, author of “Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till,” says the murder was a difficult story to tell because “it was so grim.”

“‘Let the people see’ comes from Till’s mother,” Gorn told Yahoo News of his book title. “When she saw what had happened to her son, she was horrified by how he had been beaten and shot. She made the decision that she should not be the only one to see this.”

While the open-casket funeral shed light on one of the darkest incidents of American history, Till never received justice.

On Sept. 6 of that year, a grand jury indicted Roy Bryant and Milam for kidnapping and murder in the case, which experts say was rare in the South.

“White men murdering Black folks in the Deep South often didn’t meet with nothing, let alone indictments,” Houck said.

Both men pleaded their innocence, and though there was a slew of evidence, they were acquitted by an all-white jury later that month.

Decades later: ‘Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him’

Decades later, in 2007, 72-year-old Carolyn Bryant recanted portions of her statement and admitted that Till didn’t grab her — nor did he deserve to be murdered.

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” Bryant told Timothy Tyson, who was then writing a book about the case titled “The Blood of Emmett Till,” which was published in 2017.

Despite her admission, no one was arrested, and a grand jury declined to indict her in 2022.

Houck says Carolyn Bryant was able to escape justice. “A lot of people held out hope that there would be somebody brought to justice in the case, and Carolyn Bryant for the last 20 years was the target of it,” he said.

“She lied in court in 1955,” Dave Tell, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, told Yahoo News, noting that she died in April 2023. “And so with her passing, there is no longer anyone living who could be charged with any crime in the case.”

‘We thank President Biden’

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which provides funding to help solve cold cases that occurred during the civil rights movement.

In 2022, after years of legislative failures, Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which makes lynching a federal hate crime, punishable by up to 30 years behind bars.

“Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone ... belongs in America, not everyone is created equal,” Biden said as he signed the bill. “Terror, to systematically undermine hard-fought civil rights. Terror, not just in the dark of the night but in broad daylight. Innocent men, women and children hung by nooses in trees, bodies burned and drowned and castrated.”

While Till never received the justice he deserved, advocates and experts say his legacy will live on forever, through legislation and, now, federal monuments.

“This national monument designation makes certain that Emmett Till’s life and legacy, along with his mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s social action and impact, will live on and be used to inspire others to create a more just and equitable society,” the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., a Till cousin and the last living witness of his kidnapping, said in a statement. “We thank President Biden for codifying the national monument and are heartened to know these places will foster empathy, understanding and healing for years to come.”

Cover thumbnail photo: Mandel NganN/AFP via Getty Images, Chicago Tribune file photo/Tribune News Service via Getty Images