The brutal and enraging murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a Black child who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after a white woman named Carolyn Bryant claimed he made advances to her in a store, has never been officially resolved. Even as late as 2018, the federal government reopened the investigation and closed it again in 2021 without any action taken. But Till's legacy lives on: Till’s mother Mamie Till Mobley insisted on an open casket funeral for her son, so that the brutality with which he was murdered could not be ignored.
In March, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act which made lynching a federal hate crime. Recently, actor Taye Diggs has helped bring more awareness to the 67-year-old hate crime by encouraging people to follow the Twitter account Emmett Till Legacy Foundation. On Oct. 14, a new movie 'Till' released nationwide.
Now, a nine-foot-high bronze statue of Till has been erected in Greenwood, about 10 miles from the site of the grocery store, reports MSN. His statue depicts him standing with one hand touching the brim of his hat. Sadly, the statue is in the same town as a memorial depicting multiple life-sized figures of Confederates.
Security cameras are aimed on the new statue, since previous memorials and plaques for Till have been vandalized.
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