Rush Seeks Congressional Gold Medal For Emmett Till And Mother

WASHINGTON — Before another generation of Americans got “woke” by the eight-minute video of George Floyd dying in police custody, white Americans in 1955 were horrified by news photographs of Black teen Emmett Till’s mutilated body in an open casket after he was lynched by two white men. The graphic photos, first published by the Black news media, brought home the brutality and inhumanity of the South's Jim Crow laws.

U.S. Reps. Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Don Bacon (D-NE) have introduced HR 2252, which would posthumously award a Congressional Gold Medal to Emmett Till, who was 14 when he died, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, a tireless fighter for civil rights and racial justice. The Congressional Gold Medal is awarded as a national acknowledgment of renowned persons, institutions,or events. Companion legislation was introduced — SB450 — in the Senate in February by U.S. Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ).

“When the photo from Emmett Till’s funeral ran in Jet, I will never forget how my mother gathered us around the coffee table and told us, ‘That’s why I brought my boys out of the South,’” Rush recalled. “Mamie Till-Mobley’s courageous decision to hold an open-casket funeral for her son forced America to confront the brutal truth of racism, galvanized the civil rights movement, and helped put America on the path to becoming a fairer and more just country. I thank Rep. Bacon for joining me in this effort in supporting Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley’s legacy.”

Emmett was a happy-go-lucky boy with a flair for mischief when his mother put him on a train to visit his great-uncle in Money, Mississippi, with a dire warning to watch his manners around white folks. Less than a week later, Emmett would be kidnapped, tortured and beaten for the alleged offense of whistling at a white woman. The 14-year-old’s body would be found wrapped in barbed wire and a 75-pound cotton gin fan in the Tallahatchie River. The white men who dragged him out of bed in the middle of the night were acquitted of Emmett’s murder. A month later, they would confess to Emmett’s murder to a Look magazine reporter.

Till-Mobley insisted that Mississippi authorities send her son’s body back to Chicago. After viewing Emmett’s body, his mother described “right eye lying midway of his chest, his nose broken like someone took a meat chopper to it, and a bullet hole which I could look through and see daylight on the other side.” Filled with grief and outrage, Till-Mobley ordered an open casket, saying she “wanted the world to see what they did to my baby,” helping spark the civil rights movement. Jet magazine would publish and disseminate graphic photographs of Emmett in his open casket to the Black press.

Mamie Till-Mobley died in 2003. Her legacy is also felt through the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act, which allowed the reopening of cold cases against people who committed heinous, racially motivated attacks prior to 1980. The legislation was first signed into law in 2008 and reauthorized in 2016.

“It is fitting that this medal be commissioned so our nation recognizes the horrendous lynching of Emmett Till and the legacy made by his mother Mamie Till-Mobley, in her noble quest for justice for her son," Bacon said in a news release. "We can never and must never forgot his story, and the stories of the over 4,700 victims of lynching who experienced racial terror in this country. This is a meaningful step in the right direction of addressing our past, acknowledging mistakes, and using those lessons to better ourselves and our country. I thank Rep. Rush for asking me to join him in this important recognition."