President Biden erected a national monument on Tuesday honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose killing in 1955 helped strengthen the civil rights movement, making a case for reckoning with America’s legacy of racism even as some Republicans try to limit how Black history is taught.
The monument honors Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted on an open casket at her son’s funeral, saying that “the whole country should witness it.”
The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument includes three protected areas, in Illinois, where Emmett was born 82 years ago, and in Mississippi, where he was killed at age 14 after he was accused of whistling by a white woman.
In a White House ceremony, attended by Vice President Kamala Harris as well as members of the Till family, Mr. Biden called out Republican efforts to ban the books and “bury history.”
“Darkness and denial hide well,” Mr. Biden said. But “they can’t erase anything.” We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know.”
The president’s decision to dedicate the Till monument comes amid a divisive political battle over how Black history should be taught in schools.
Last week, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, was criticized after education officials in his state introduced new standards for teaching Black history.
The standards state that middle schools must teach that “slaves develop skills that, in some cases, can be used for their personal benefit.” The description drew widespread criticism, including from Ms. Harris.
“We cannot be persuaded to believe that we will be better if we forget,” he said at Tuesday’s ceremony,
Mr. DeSantis, who made fighting a “woke” education agenda a signature part of his election platform, defended the standards, which were created to implement a law he signed known as the “Stop WOKE Act.” He accused Democrats of “indoctrinating students.”
Since Mr. Biden took office, more than 40 states have introduced or passed laws or taken other steps to restrict how issues of race and racism are taught, according to Education Week. The outlet tracked the legislation against so-called “critical race theory,” a term adopted by conservative activists as a catchall for teachings about race.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, discussed the new standards in Florida on Monday, saying that the Till monument comes “at an important moment.”
“We must not forget what we have seen in these past few months, because we have witnessed extreme officials in Florida and throughout the country who lied about American history – the latest example that is shameful, shameful promoting a lie that enslaves people who actually benefited from slavery,” he said. “It’s not accurate, it’s insulting. It hurts and prevents an honest account of our country’s history.
The Biden administration requested the death of Emmett and the activism of Ms. Till-Mobley used to be. During a White House screening of the movie “Till” in February, Mr. Biden told the crowd he chose the movie because “history is important.”
“To remember history is to illuminate the good, the bad, the truth and who we are as a nation,” he said at the screening.
He also said that signing the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which makes lynching a federal hate crime, in March 2022, is “one of the many honors of my career.” Mr. Biden also signed a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would posthumously award Emmett and Ms. Till-Mobley the Congressional Gold Medal, the body’s highest civilian honor.
The monument locations are intended to honor the Till family.
One site is Graball Landing in Tallahatchie County, Miss., where Emmett’s body is believed to have been pulled from the Tallahatchie River. His body was so mutilated that he could only be identified by a ring his mother had given him before he left to visit relatives in Mississippi.
The other is the church in Chicago where Emmett’s funeral was held, Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ.
More than 100,000 people poured into the church during the public viewing days.
The third site was the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Miss., where an all-white jury acquitted Emmett’s killers.
Anna Betts contributed reporting from New York, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Washington.
