Biden to designate national monument for Emmett Till

Emmett Till had been visiting family in Mississippi when he was brutally killed

President Joe Biden will establish a national monument to honour Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched in 1955 in Mississippi, as well as his mother, a White House official said.

Till's lynching and the activism of his mother Mamie Till-Mobley helped galvanise the civil rights movement.

Mr Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday which is Till's birthday, 25 July.

It comes a year after he signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law.

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will include three separate sites in two states - Illinois and Mississippi.

One site is the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, a historically black neighbourhood on Chicago's South Side where thousands of people gathered to mourn and bear witness to Emmett Till's death in September 1955.

In Mississippi, the monument will include Graball Landing, which is believed to be the site where Emmett Till's brutalised body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. The third site is the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Emmett Till's murderers were tried by an all-white jury and acquitted.

The new monument would "protect places that tell the story of Emmett Till's too-short life and racially-motivated murder, the unjust acquittal of his murderers, and the activism of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley", the White House said in a statement.

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was brutally beaten and killed after a white woman claimed he harassed her at a store.

• Who was Emmett Till?

Carolyn Bryant Donham accused Till of harassing her while she was working alone as a clerk in the family grocery store on the evening of 24 August 1955 in Money, Mississippi.

Three days later, her husband and his half-brother kidnapped the boy at gunpoint, tortured him and threw his battered body into a river.

The two white men, Roy Bryant and JW Milam, were tried on murder charges a month later, but an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them.

Till's mother insisted on an open coffin at the funeral so the public could bear witness to what he endured, and photos of the boy's brutalised remains shocked the nation.

Last year, a grand jury in Mississippi declined to prosecute Donham for her role in Till's death, and she died in April 2023 at the age of 88.

• Emmett Till accuser Carolyn Brant dies at 88

Tuesday would have marked Emmett Till's 82nd birthday.

In the US, presidents can establish historic landmarks, structures, and other objects of historic interest as national monuments to protect the sites, similar to a national park.

The national monument comes a year after Mr Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law, which makes lynching a federal hate crime offence.

In 2022, the US Congress also passed legislation to posthumously award Till and his mother the Congressional Gold Medal, which Congress says is the "highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions".