Executive Office of the President
Proclamation 10602 of July 25, 2023 Establishment of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument A Proclamation The brutal lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 and the subsequent courage of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, to ensure his death would not be in vain helped bring broad national attention to the injustices and inequality that Black people experienced during the Jim Crow era across the United States and, in particular, the South. The story—one that is shaped by the fight for civil rights and the historic movement called the Great Migration, during which millions of Black people moved out of the South—is rooted in the specific places where Emmett Till lived and traveled in his too-short life: Chicago, where Mamie Till-Mobley came with her family for better opportunities and then mourned her son at the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ; and the Mississippi Delta, where Emmett Till was murdered in an act of racial violence while visiting relatives, where the recovery of his body is memorialized at Graball Landing, and where his assailants were wrongfully acquitted at the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse. These places contain historic objects that illuminate the complicated fabric of our Nation and the injustice and inequality that Black people continue to experience today. They are places where we can learn about and reflect on the specific, painful events that ended Emmett Till's life and the larger history of Black oppression, resistance, and resilience, which ultimately culminated in a movement that bent our Nation's laws toward justice. The Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, Graball Landing, and the objects located at those sites have historic importance that arises from the roles that Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley played in the birth and early evolution of the Civil Rights Movement. Mamie Till-Mobley was born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan near Webb,…
Citation: 88 FR 48705
