President Biden Dedicated a Monument to Emmett Till

President Biden Made a Decision to Raise a Monument to Emmett Till and His Mother Mamie Till-Mobley.

Jul 27, 2023By Angela Davic, News, Discoveries, In-depth Reporting, and Analysis
President Biden
President Biden. Via Spectrum News

 

President Biden signed a declaration of raising a monument for the nation, which enabled him to raise one for Emmet Till and his mother. Emmet Till is a black teen of 14 years, murdered in the mid 50s. His mother publicly tried to tell the truth about what happened. Mamie Till-Mobley really wanted to tell the true story.

 

President Biden on Changes of Today

Portrait of President Biden
Via U.S. Embassy in Tunisia

 

What actually happened? Well, everything started at a grocery store where a female worker accused him of making improper approaches. At that time, Emmet Till was on vacation, visiting his family near Money, Mississippi. Not much time passed since that incident, when two men kidnapped him, tortured him, and then murdered him. The authorities found the body in on August 31, 1955.

 

At the beginning of September of the same year, he was buried. In order to see the act of violence against the boy, the mother asked that his chest be left open. This was contrary to the order of the authorities. She said she “wanted the world to see” what happened to her son. “Ida B. Wells once said, ‘The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth on them’. That’s our charge today”, President Biden said at the signing.

 

US
(Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Signing declaration occurred at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument  includes three locations totaling 5.70 acres. These are: Graball Landing, near Glendora, Mississippi. Mississippi as a place where the authorities found his body at the Tallahatchie River. Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where the funeral took place; and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi where killers got their sentence.

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A New Curriculum on American History

 signing bil
US President Biden signing executive actions on coronavirus, via BBC news.

 

The president’s signing occurred on the day before Till could have turned 82. It also emerged in the midst of new disputes regarding the American History curricula.  A fresh set of guidelines for how Black history needs to be carried out taught in state schools got  approved just recently by the Florida Board of Education. For example, middle graders need must know “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”, according to the department’s website.

 

In May, the board also rejected social studies textbooks that included references to social justice and “other information that was not aligned with Florida Law. Last year, the state passed governor Ron DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act”, which prohibits instructors from saying that people may be privileged or oppressed based on their race or skin color.

 

Hunter Biden's Art
Hunter Biden with his father, President Joe Biden. Photo by Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA.

 

President Biden alluded to these developments during today’s ceremony. “At a time when there are those who seek to ban books and bury history, I’ll be clear: Darkness and denialism can hide much, but they erase nothing”, he said in a statement after the fact. “We should learn everything: the good, bad, and truth of who we are”.

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By Angela DavicNews, Discoveries, In-depth Reporting, and AnalysisAngela is a journalism student at the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade and received a scholarship for continued education in Prague. She completed her internship at the daily newspaper DANAS and worked as an executive editor at Talas.