U.S. President Joe Biden will establish a national monument to honor Emmett Till, the black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured, and killed in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, and his mother, a White House official said at the weekend.
Mr. Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday to create the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Tuesday is the anniversary of Emmett Till’s birth in 1941.
The monument will protect places that are central to the story of his life and death at age 14, the acquittal of his white killers, and his mother’s activism.
Till’s mother’s insistence on an open casket to show the world how her son had been brutalized and Jet magazine’s decision to publish photos of his mutilated body helped galvanize the U.S. civil rights movement.
Mr. Biden’s decision also comes at a time of rising conflicts over racial matters in the United States.
Conservative leaders are trying to end the teaching of slavery and black history in public-sector schools, as well as the incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from college classrooms to corporate boardrooms.
On Friday, Vice-President Kamala Harris criticized a revised black history curriculum in Florida that includes teaching that enslaved people benefited from the skills they “learned” at the hands of the people who denied them freedom.
The Florida Board of Education approved the curriculum to satisfy legislation signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has accused public-sector schools of liberal indoctrination.
“How is it that anyone could suggest that, in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Ms. Harris asked in a speech delivered from Jacksonville, Florida.
Mr. DeSantis said he had no role in devising his state’s new education standards but defended the components on how enslaved people have supposedly benefited.
“All of that is rooted in whatever is factual,” he claimed.
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