Two Tallahatchie County sites of historical significance to the racially motivated Emmett Till murder of 1955 will help to comprise the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.
Multiple news outlets reported Saturday that President Joe Biden will on Tuesday sign a proclamation to establish the monument on what would have been Till's 82nd birthday.
The Chicago Defender broke the story around mid-afternoon Saturday.
The newspaper reported that locations in Mississippi and Illinois will comprise the national monument, including Graball Landing, believed to be the site where Till's mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River; the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, where two white men charged with killing the Black 14-year-old were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury; and Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, Illinois, where thousands passed by Till’s glass-covered coffin in September 1955.
A national monument is a land or historic area given permanent protection by Congress or by the president through the Antiquities Act of 1906.
The Sumner courthouse, listed in March 2007 on the National Register of Historic Places and, before that, as a Mississippi Landmark, is also a designated stop on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.
A campaign to designate the courthouse as a national monument and/or park has been underway for several years.
In early May 2018, the National Park Service conducted a public meeting about adding the more than 110-year-old county office building to the National Park System.
In May 2021, the Sumner courthouse was the setting for a town hall style meeting facilitated by the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner to gather public input on development of a memorial at the Graball Landing site.
In February 2022, a delegation of federal officials visited the building and other historical sites in Mississippi during discussions about that possibility.
Under a 2017 federal law, the National Park Service launched a study to examine key civil rights sites in Mississippi for possible designation as a national park area.
