They want authorities to launch a kidnapping prosecution against the woman who set off the lynching by accusing the Black Chicago teen of improper advances in 1955.
Emmett Till
Biden acknowledged the long delay during remarks in the Rose Garden to lawmakers, administration officials and civil rights advocates, stressing how the violent deaths of Black Americans were used to intimidate them and prevent them from voting simply because of their skin color.
Authorities have known for decades that Carolyn Bryant Donham, now in her 80s and living in North Carolina, played a key role in Emmett Till’s slaying, and they need to act immediately to bring her to justice before time runs out, said Deborah Watts, a cousin of Till.
Years in the making, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is among some 200 bills that have been introduced over the past century that have tried to ban lynching in America. It is named for the Black teenager from Chicago whose brutal killing in Mississippi in 1955 became a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights era.
On Monday, “Chicago Tonight” co-host and “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices” host Brandis Friedman moderated the latest edition of our “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices” community conversation series in a discussion focused on the legacy of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley.
Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J. and Richard Burr, R-N.C., introduced the bill to honor Emmett Till and his mother with the highest civilian honor that Congress awards.
Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were tried on murder charges about a month after Emmett Till was killed, but an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them.
Recipients of money from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund include a consortium of civil rights sites and Black churches in Alabama; work to establish an African American heritage trail in Colorado; and preservation of the church where Emmett Till's funeral was held in Chicago after his lynching in Mississippi in 1955.
ABC will air a short-run series “Women of the Movement” next season about Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son Emmett Till became a symbol of the civil rights movement after he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
The murders of Emmett Till and George Floyd were separated by more than six decades, contrasting circumstances and countless protests, but their families say they feel an intimate connection in their grief and what comes next.
The red brick two-flat in Woodlawn is now protected from demolition and any significant changes to its exterior. The vision is to transform the home into an international heritage pilgrimage site.
Blacks in Green buys home, plans to create international heritage pilgrim site
The former Woodlawn home of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, is now in the hands of the nonprofit Blacks in Green. Founder Naomi Davis shares the group’s vision for the historic site.
The Chicago Historic Resource Survey, completed in 1995, has been an invaluable tool for preservationists. But it’s beginning to show its age, and the lack of sites of significance to the Black and Latino communities is notable.
The Chicago Commission on Landmarks unanimously approved preliminary landmark status for Emmett Till’s former home, calling the red brick two-flat a “modest home that is monumentally important.”
Exactly 65 years after the brutal killing and shocking open-casket funeral of Emmett Till, the red brick two-flat where he lived with his mother is finally on the path to an official city landmark designation.