House passes bill to honor Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley

Associated Press has reported, with a unanimous vote, the House passed a bill Wednesday to award the late Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley the Congressional Gold Medal.
The Senate’s version of the bill, sponsored by Sen. Corey Booker, passed in January 2022.
Booker said in a January statement that “The courage and activism demonstrated by Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, in displaying to the world the brutality endured by her son helped awaken the nation’s conscience, forcing America to reckon with its failure to address racism and the glaring injustices that stem from such hatred.”
Till was only 14-years-old when he was falsely accused of threatening a white woman and subsequently murdered and lynched in 1955. Till-Mobley insisted that her son have an open casket funeral to show the extent of the brutality he faced.
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“The press took pictures of Till with a bullet in the skull, an eye gouged out and his head partially crushed,” as the Washington Post reports. Only the ring that Till wore that belonged to his late father allowed them to identify his body, which was floating in the Tallahatchie River.
More than 60 years after the incident, his accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, revealed she lied about what happened. However, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict her this year.
Till-Mobley co-authored a book about her son, “The Death of Innocence,” which was released in 2003, the year she passed away. She taught special education in Chicago.
After 200 attempts, Congress failed to pass legislation honoring the Till family, as AP reports. The medal will be kept at the National Museum of African American History and placed near the casket in which the Till was buried.