Biden signs proclamation to honor Emmett Till with national monument

President Joe Biden on Tuesday established a national monument to commemorate the legacy of Emmett Till, whose murder helped ignite the civil rights movement, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.

Biden signed the proclamation to create the new Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument on the 82nd anniversary of the Black Chicago teenager’s birth.

“At a time when there are those who seek to ban books, bury history, we’re making it clear — crystal, crystal clear: While darkness and denialism can hide much, they erase nothing,” the president said at the White House signing ceremony, appearing to reference Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida with his remarks. “Only with truth comes healing, justice, repair and another step forward toward forming a more perfect union. We’ve got a hell of a long way to go.”

The signing comes amid escalating tensions in the U.S. over racial issues, like the inclusion of teachings about slavery and Black history in public schools. On Friday, DeSantis dismissed Vice President Kamala Harris’ criticism of the Black history standards recently adopted by the Florida Board of Education. Harris, appearing at Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.’s national convention in Indianapolis on Thursday, had taken aim at the standards, which include instruction on how slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said in her keynote address. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”

The vice president rehashed those comments at the proclamation signing ceremony Tuesday.

“Today, there are those in our nation who would prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past, those who attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said. “Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the Florida governor’s remarks “inaccurate” and “insulting” during her briefing Monday, saying they obstruct an honest portrayal of the nation’s history. She further highlighted the new monument as an “important moment” and part of depicting “the broader story of American Black oppression, their survival.”

The Till monument, the fourth national monument designated by the Biden administration, will span three sites in Illinois and Mississippi that hold historical importance to the story of Emmett Till’s life and the events surrounding his racially motivated murder in 1955.

Till was just 14 when a white female grocery clerk accused him of whistling at her and making inappropriate advances during a visit to family in the Mississippi Delta. He was then abducted and tortured, and his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River. Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, both white men, were tried on murder charges but acquitted by an all-white jury after an hour of deliberations. Months later, the men confessed to the crime in a paid interview with Look magazine.

Till’s death became a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, with Rosa Parks saying his memory inspired her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in a historic act of defiance of racial segregation laws. The activism of Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted on an open-casket funeral to show the world the brutality her son endured, helped galvanize public outrage and highlight the deep-seated inequalities of the Jim Crow South.

“It’s just barbaric what happened,” Biden said of Till-Mobley’s choice Tuesday. “All you moms out there — imagine the courage it took to say, ‘Let them see.’ The courage.”

The National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit that attended the ceremony and worked with Till family members for years to advocate for the national park site, celebrated its realization.

“We still see echoes of Emmett’s story and blatant racial injustice in our society today,” Theresa Pierno, the association’s president and CEO, said in a statement on Tuesday. “With this new national park site, our leaders are bringing this story back into the light so that we may all continue to learn and grow from it, just as we have at Birmingham, Stonewall, and other national monuments.”

The monument’s sites encompass the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood in Chicago where Till’s funeral service took place. They also include the Graball Landing site, where his body was believed to be discovered, and the courthouse in Tallahatchie, Miss., where his killers were acquitted.

In March 2022, Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, recognizing lynching as a federal hate crime.