National park honor could save legacy, provide healing

• Advocates want President Biden to create a U.S. national park honoring civil rights figure Emmett Till using the 1906 Antiquities Act.
• The 14-year-old, whose murder sparked the modern civil rights movement, is referenced in a law that makes lynching a federal hate crime.
• The proposed park would include the Chicago church where Till’s funeral was held and the Mississippi courthouse where his killers’ trial took place.

It’s one of the United States’ most infamous hate crimes, the spark of the modern civil rights movement – and yet, sites associated with the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till have gone largely unmarked or left to ruin.

Preserving Till’s legacy – and structures critical to telling his story – is what some aim to achieve by persuading President Joe Biden to use his executive powers to create a national park honoring the Black child from Chicago and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.