At Graball Landing along the Tallahatchie River near Glendora, Mississippi, where Emmett Till‘s badly beaten corpse was found 70 years ago, there have been multiple attempts to erect a monument in memory of that horrific moment in time that would change America forever.
As author Wright Thompson chronicles in his novel The Barn, the first sign, paid for by Morgan Freeman, was stolen and thrown into the river six months after it was erected. Its replacement was shot at 317 times in eight years. A third sign was defaced by Ole Miss frat boys.
“They had to install a bulletproof sign to remember Emmett Till,” Thompson wrote.
Now that sign is in jeopardy, threatened by a new Trump administration policy that also impacts 137 other historical monuments. The Justice Department earlier this month handed down a legal opinion giving presidents the ability to revoke or shrink certain national monuments, empowering President Donald Trump to expand his increasingly irrational movement against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, with some land reportedly under consideration to be used to extract minerals.
It’s not just the Mississippi monument of Till that could be removed. Two other sites, at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where his confessed killers were found not guilty by a jury of all white people, and at Chicago’s Roberts Temple, where Till’s funeral was held, are also at risk.
Till’s mother insisted on an open casket, wanting the world to see what had been done to her 14-year-old son, who was visiting relatives in Mississippi in the summer of 1955. After a white woman falsely claimed he whistled at her, Emmett was kidnapped in the middle of the night and lynched.
It provided a lasting, gruesome image that “really sparked the modern civil rights movement,” said historian Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources and government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association.
Spears has led the movement to get federal protections for the areas in Mississippi and Chicago that tell Till’s story “to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else’s son ever again.”
The threat to Till’s monuments comes at a time when many believe the Trump administration is trying to rewrite history, erasing iconic figures like Harriet Tubman and Medgar Evers from America’s story.
“We can’t even remember Emmett Till??” asked one woman on X. “Didn’t he go through enough? What’s the harm?”
The president has previously complained about historians focusing on America’s darkest chapters. He advocates a more “positive” curriculum that de-emphasizes historical stains like slavery and Jim Crow.
“There is no good reason to remove the Emmett Till monument. Only reason for removal is pro-racist policies,” wrote one critic, posting on X.
Nearly $1 billion in budget cuts, advocated by DOGE, could force more than 300 park sites would be forced to shut down, according to former National Park Service Director Chuck Sams.
“People don’t like to look at their past when it shows a negative light of who we are, and I can understand that nobody likes to look at their own personal past that may have a negative light, but we also know that in order to learn from our own history, we also have to learn from our past mistakes,” Sams told CBS News. “And we, as Americans, have never been actually scared to do so, and I don’t think we should be now. We look at our past, and we know that from our past mistakes that we have become stronger.”
In a particularly tone-deaf statement, White House spokesperson Anne Kelly ignored questions about the threat to the monuments.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, [Interior] Secretary [Doug] Burgum is keeping our parks ready for peak season, ensuring they are in pristine condition for visitors, and restoring truth and sanity to depictions of American history in line with the president’s executive order,” she said, adding, “The president is simultaneously following through on his promise to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ and restore American energy dominance.”
Some said they believe the president is following through on his plan to whitewash history.
As someone posted on X today, “MAGA is lynching Emmett Till all over again.”
