President Joe Biden signed a proclamation Tuesday creating a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, and his mother.
The proclamation creates the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi. Tuesday is the anniversary of Emmett Till's birth in 1941.
The proclamation creates the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi. Tuesday is the anniversary of Emmett Till's birth in 1941.
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00:00 [ Applause ]
00:27 >> When I was preparing these remarks, I quite frankly,
00:32 and my colleagues will understand this,
00:33 I found myself trying to temper my anger as I was writing it.
00:39 I'm not joking.
00:41 I can't fathom.
00:44 I can't fathom what it must have been like.
00:48 But it's inspiring to see how many of your family have
00:52 continued as mother's courage to find faith in pain,
01:00 and purpose in pain.
01:01 That's a remarkable thing, it seems to me.
01:05 Insisting on an open casket for her murdered,
01:09 and I might add, maimed and mutilated son.
01:12 Fourteen years old.
01:15 Fourteen years old.
01:20 She said, "Let the people see what I've seen.
01:23 Let the people see what I have seen."
01:27 My God. At a time when there are those who seek
01:33 to ban books, bury history, we're making it clear,
01:39 crystal, crystal clear.
01:40 [ Applause ]
01:49 While darkness and denialism can hide much, they erase nothing.
01:55 They can hide, but they erase nothing.
01:58 We can't just choose to learn what we want to know.
02:01 We have to learn what we should know.
02:04 We should know about our country.
02:07 We should know everything, the good, the bad,
02:10 the truth of who we are as a nation.
02:12 That's what great nations do, and we are a great nation.
02:18 That's what they do, for only with truth comes healing,
02:21 justice, repair, and another step forward toward affirming a
02:26 more perfect union.
02:27 We've got a hell of a long way to go.
02:29 Silence is complicity.
02:31 I will not be silent, nor will you be silent about what happens.
02:35 [ Applause ]