seriously, all you moms out there. imagine the courage it took to say, let them see. the courage. it s now my honor to sign this proclamation in memory of emmett till, and i thank you all for being here. i am i know i m considered too much of an optimist, but i believe if we keep pushing, we re going to continue to make progress. we re going to continue to make progress. it s already being made. the idea that when that 14-year-old was buried, this many people of color holding powerful office, changed the
with ron desantis and other republicans, this white house is eager to draw that in ink. they definitely dove tailed burying history, we re going to make it crystal clear. it being what the history really was. that s a large part of why they are doing exactly this. this is something that has been a lock time coming. it s been nearly a decade. the family is now just getting a national monument. and just last year, just last year, an antilynching bill signed into law that president biden signed into law. so as president obama likes to say, there s a long arc of history. president biden is doing what he can to move that forward. the murder of emmett till and
emmett stuttered, so his mom taught him to whistle to break the stutter so he could get his words out. she often wondered if that had something to do with his untimely death. the state alleges emmett till was abducted and murdered by roy bryant and j.w. milam. sunday morning, about 2:30 someone called at the door. and he said, i want it i want the boy that done all that talk. not only did they beat him, they didn t have to because they had shot him in the head. and the body came back, it was in four wooden boxes. well, the coffin could not be opened. his mother, being the woman that she was, she told mr. reynold, you all want to open it? give me a crowbar. i m going to open this casket. the reaction of the adults in the family, the pain, the hurt, the screaming, the yelling. i was 7.
i m 72 now and i still cry. when you think about emmett till s mother deciding to have an open casket so that the world might see what was done to her child, that also meant she had to see what the world did to her child. i think that miss donald had some reflections back, remembering the courage and the spirit of emmett s mother, because she wants the world to know this is still occurring 30 years later. i just want to say that he was always there when we needed him. and he s the type of friend that any of us want. amen. lord, i want to see him again. i know i will. at that time of the funeral, nobody really could explain why it happened.
in the mobile press register, which was the daily white newspaper in the city of mobile at the time, we blast black officials. we thought it was necessary for the other side to be told. michael and a group of his friends started a weekly newspaper called the new times. one of the reasons that newspaper was started was so that it could tell the story from the black person s perspective. the new times is literally doing the work that jet magazine did back in 1955. jet magazine was, like, black twitter at the moment. emmett till s picture catalyzed the modern civil rights movement because these latching images had the effect of literally traumatizing people. in the same way, the new times