White House to establish national monument honoring Emmett Till

The White House will establish a national monument, CBS News has learned, honoring Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago boy whose abduction, torture and lynching in 1955 while visiting family in Mississippi played a role in sparking the civil rights movement.

President Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday, the 82nd anniversary of Till’s birth, establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.

The monument will be located across three sites in Mississippi and Illinois, CBS News learned. One will be located in the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in the Chicago South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville, where Till’s killing was mourned in September 1955.

The second site will be at Graball Landing, Mississippi, where Till’s body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River.

The third will be at Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Till’s suspected killers were acquitted by an all-White jury less than a month after his brutal murder.

In August of 1955, Carolyn Bryant Donham, a White woman working as a grocery clerk, accused Till of making improper advances towards her while she was working alone in a store in Money, Mississippi.

Three days later, Till was abducted from his relatives home. On Aug. 31, 1955, three days after his abduction, his mutilated body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River.

The following month, Donham’s husband, Roy Bryant, along with Roy’s half-brother J.W. Milam, were both acquitted of murder charges in Till’s death.

In 2022, a grand jury in Mississippi declined to prosecute Carolyn Donham for her role in the events that led to Till’s lynching. Prior to that, in 2021, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it was ending its investigation into the case.

Carolyn Donham died in April at the age of 88.

At the time of her death, Till’s cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., told CBS News in a statement that even though no one would be held to account for his cousin’s death “it is up to all of us to be accountable to the challenges we still face in overcoming racial injustice.”

— Cara Tabachnick contributed to this report.