Biden plans to sign a proclamation Tuesday, on the anniversary of Till's birthday, according to a White House official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity as the president has not formally indicated his plans. Till was a 14-year-old black boy who was shot and killed by a group of white men in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman, Carol Bryant, in 1955. His killers would tie his body to a cotton gin wheel with barbed wire to weigh his body down in the Tallahatchie River.
There are three proposed sites for the monuments, the first of which is Graball Landing, Mississippi, where Till's body was discovered. Another site will include the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Bryant's husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam were acquitted of Till's murder. The third site will be Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, Illinois, Till's home state, where his funeral was held. At the time, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, opted to hold an open-casket funeral to bring attention to her son's death.
During Black History Month this year, Biden hosted a showing of Till, a film based on his mother. The showing was held in the White House East Room and preceded by remarks from the president on the importance of teaching civil rights history. This came a year after the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was unanimously passed by the Senate and also passed by the House in a 422-3 vote, suggesting a monument would be accepted well in Congress.
The legislation was the culmination of Biden's campaign speaking out against racially-motivated crimes. Ahead of the 2020 election, the then-presidential candidate spoke out against the shooting murder of Ahmaud Arbery of Georgia, who, in Biden's words, was "shot down in cold blood, essentially lynched before our very eyes, 2020 style."
In 2019, Biden would have to apologize for a comment he made during then-President Clinton's impeachment hearings, claiming they could be viewed as a “partisan lynching.” Biden admitted the word lynching "wasn't the right word to use."