Chicagoans celebrate Emmett Till’s birthday as Biden expected to establish national monument in his honor

As a young Black man, Carlson Ayanlaja said Emmett Till’s brutal murder reminds him that regardless of his socioeconomic status, he’s “still considered a target in the American eyes” or even “a menace to society.”

Referencing a quote by rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle, Ayanlaja said “the marathon continues.”

“If I was in the same position in 1955, that could have happened to me,” he said. “We can’t just ever stop being aware of racism and the impact it’s had in our lives.”

Ayanlaja, 23, of Hyde Park, is the Bryant Williams Environmental Justice Fellow with Blacks in Greens, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting economic development and environmental justice in the Black community. The group hosted a Sunday afternoon celebration at the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley House in Woodlawn in honor of what would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, President Joe Biden is expected to sign a proclamation creating the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument at one site in Illinois and two in Mississippi, a White House official said Saturday. The monument will be the fourth Biden has created since taking office in 2021 and his latest tribute to the younger Till. In March 2022, Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law, making lynching a federal hate crime.

Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, the location of Till’s funeral where thousands traveled to mourn, is the Illinois site. The National Trust for Historic Preservation added the Chicago church to its list of the nation’s most endangered historic places in 2020 due to “severe structural issues.” The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group said the church was not used much by its congregation and needed funding for rehabilitation.

In Woodlawn, about 200 people ate ice cream, line-danced and sat on hammocks that were part of an art installation titled “Be Careful, I Always Am.”

Till, a Black teenager from Chicago’s South Side, was murdered while visiting family in Mississippi in 1955 after he was accused of flirting with a white woman. His mother’s decision to have an open casket at his funeral, displaying the brutality of the 14-year-old’s death, helped start the Civil Rights Movement.

“Incidents like this really woke up not just the United States, but the whole world about how bad racism in America was,” Ayanlaja said. “I think this is a reminder to people about how this should never happen again, and a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do.”

“If we can have a Confederate monument, we need to have these sorts of things as monuments as well,” he added.

The Mississippi locations are Graball Landing, believed to be where Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Till’s killers were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury.

Biden’s decision also comes at a fraught time in the United States over matters concerning race. Conservative leaders are pushing back against the teaching of slavery and Black history in public schools, as well as the incorporation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs from college classrooms to corporate boardrooms.

Ayanlaja isn’t the only person who thinks Biden is making a good decision. Naomi Davis, the CEO and founder of Blacks in Green, said many people have personal connections to Hill’s death. Her mother, she said, lived just 13 miles from the Mississippi town where two white men killed him.

“We love that it was announced today,” Davis said. “It just adds to the depth of consciousness that we believe is important.”

Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam, were tried on murder charges about a month after Till was killed, but an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them. Months later, they confessed to killing Till in a paid interview with Look magazine. Bryant was married to Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman Till supposedly whistled at, in 1955. She died earlier this year.

To Davis, Till’s death and the subsequent Civil Rights Movement is an example of Black Americans “making something beautiful out of something horrible.” But the path to justice isn’t finished, she said.

“What’s happened since then? How did our neighborhoods and our metrics of health and wealth as Black people go so horribly wrong?” she said. “And how do we reinvent the walkable village here in the age of climate crisis in a way that we can increase household income?”

Chicago’s City Council granted Till’s and his mother’s South Side home, located at 6427 S. St. Lawrence Ave., landmark status in 2021. Since then, Blacks in Green has worked to turn the location into a museum, garden and community performance theater. They hope to open it by 2025.

They had a groundbreaking Sunday to kick off exterior renovations for the building, which are funded by a $250,000 Adopt-a-Landmark Fund grant from the city. Renovations include masonry repairs, door replacements and installation of energy-efficient windows.

The event also featured artwork next door to the home by Germane Barnes, 37, the director of Studio Barnes and associate professor and director of the master of architecture graduate program at the University of Miami.

The piece is a three-story scaffold clad in decorative vinyl wrap. It symbolizes the protection Mamie provided her son, surrounded by items inspired by Till’s love for Superman comic books. It also incorporates oral histories about Till from Preservation Futures. Hammocks are at the ground level for people to sit in and become part of the installation.

Barnes, who grew up in the Austin neighborhood, said the piece was centered around happiness to celebrate Till’s birthday. The installation is open until Nov. 27. Two college students, George Elliot and Isabella Adelsohn, helped him design the piece.

Barnes drew parallels between Till’s relationship with his mother and his own relationship with his mom, which led to the title of the installation, “Be Careful, I Always Am.”

“I’m lucky to have a mother much like Emmett’s mother that always wants me to be safe,” Barnes said. “Since I was a young child, anytime I leave the home she’d say these specific words to me, ‘Be careful,’ and I’d always flippantly say back, ‘I always am’ as if I’m invincible. What you learn is the world isn’t always very kind.”