Joe Biden to unveil civil rights monument amid racism controversy

The horrible lynching of Emmett Till in the 1950s will be commemorated by President Joe Biden’s designation of a new national monument on Tuesday. According to the White House, this symbolic action is a response to the resurgence of racism.

The monument, which will be placed in several sites, will honour the 14-year-old Black kid who was tortured and killed by white men in Mississippi in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at the wife of a white shopkeeper.

His mother Mamie Till-Mobley, who is also memorialised there, developed into an activist and is highly acknowledged for having contributed to the US civil rights struggle.

The White House stated that the “new monument will protect places that tell the story of Emmett Till’s tragically short life and racially motivated murder, the unfair acquittal of his murderers, and the activism of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who bravely brought the world’s attention to the horrific injustices and racism of the time, catalysing the civil rights movement.”

On the 82nd anniversary of Till’s birth, Biden will dedicate three historical locations in Illinois and Mississippi.

One of them will be the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Till’s mother asked that the casket remain open for the boy’s funeral so that a sizable crowd could view the boy’s deformed body.

The courtroom in Tallahatchie, Mississippi, where a white-only jury exonerated the men accused of killing Till, will also be mentioned. Later, they would confess to the crime.

The third place will be where Till’s damaged body was eventually found on the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. There and at other places across Tallahatchie County, memorial signs for the horrible incident have been vandalised and damaged numerous times over the years.