Mississippi

National monument honoring Emmett Till to consist of 3 sites in Illinois and Mississippi

Published

11 months ago

July 25, 2023

National monument honoring Emmett Till to consist of 3 sites in Illinois and Mississippi

President Biden is expected to sign a proclamation Tuesday designating locations associated with Emmett Till as a national monument on what would have been his 82nd birthday, recognizing the impact of his killing on the civil rights movement.

Graball Landing in Mississippi, the Tallahatchie River location where the brutally beaten body of 14-year-old Emmett Till was dumped and discovered in 1955, will soon be one of three sites designated as a national monument in his honor, CBS News has learned.

The White House is expected to announce the river site, the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse and Chicago’s Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ as part of a national monument, recognizing both the history of racial violence and the need for legal justice. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, is also being honored with the monument.

“It isn’t for our nation to remain stuck in a painful past. It really is to challenge our nation to say, ‘we can do better,’” said Brent Leggs, who serves as the executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action fund; a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Leggs’ team helped secure the designation and hopes it will draw attention to approximately 5,000 additional Black historic sites across the United States that require approximately half a billion dollars for preservation.

The memory of Emmett Till remains imprinted on the banks of the Tallahatchie River.

“This landscape holds memory of one of the most painful moments in American history,” said Leggs. The site serves as a grim reminder of the violent and threatening environment faced by Black youth in American society during that era.

Nearly 70 years later, Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., Till’s cousin, still remembers the fateful summer of 1955 when they traveled from Chicago to visit relatives in the Mississippi Delta. On their trip, the cousins visited Bryant’s Grocery Store, owned by Roy and Carolyn Bryant. Till’s innocent act of whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a White woman, resulted in fatal consequences.

“That’s a death sentence,” Parker said.

Days later, armed with guns, Roy Bryant and his brother J.W. Milam found the family at their home.

“I heard ’em talkin, ‘You got two boys here from Chicago?’” Parker said. “I said, ‘God, we’re getting ready to die.’ Shaking like a leaf on the tree. I closed my eyes to be shot but they didn’t shoot me. They came to take Emmett. That’s what they did.”

Till was abducted from his relative’s home, tortured and shot before his lifeless body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River.

The images of Till’s beaten and bruised body appeared in Black-owned newspapers and magazines across the country, thanks to the efforts of the Black press, which played a crucial role in exposing racial disparities.

Mamie Till-Mobley, Till’s mother, held an open casket funeral at Roberts Temple in Chicago, where nearly 50,000 people paid their respects. The public viewing of Till’s disfigured face is considered a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

“She allowed the world to see what she saw when she opened that box that they shipped from in Mississippi: the face of racial hatred and racism in America,” said Marvel Parker, Wheeler Parker’s wife.

The Parkers are focused on restoring the 100-year-old church building, which requires approximately $20 million for full restoration.

At the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, restored to its 1955 appearance, Emmett Till Interpretive Center executive director Patrick Weems facilitates tours. Visitors are reminded of the battle between racial violence and legal injustice that took place there.

It was at that courthouse that an all-White male jury acquitted Bryant and Milam for Till’s murder. Months later, the brothers confessed their crime to a magazine, but were never held accountable.

“There was a battle here. There’s a battle of the souls of this nation about what was gonna win out. Are they gonna say segregation is right and what the murderers did was OK? Or is justice going to prevail? And that day — we all lost,” Weems said.

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Mississippi

Laura Jane Grace & the Mississippi Medicals: Tiny Desk Concert

Published

49 mins ago

July 3, 2024

Press Room

Laura Jane Grace & the Mississippi Medicals: Tiny Desk Concert

The set list kept changing, right up until showtime. Laura Jane Grace had to cram more than two decades of music — both solo material and from her influential punk band Against Me! — into 15 minutes. Her band was used to this gleeful chaos. Grace’s wife, Paris Campbell Grace, Drive-By Truckers’ Matt Patton and The Ergs’ Mikey Erg make up the Mississippi Medicals, a loving and stabilizing force for a catalog of songs about American injustice, creative frustration, identity and broken promises… but also hope through collective action and personal revelation. In this Tiny Desk, you’ll see them play newer songs (“I’m Not a Cop” and “All F***** Up”), but also throwbacks to “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong” (a personal request) and an absolutely powerful version of “Black Me Out.”

An Against Me! show changed my life. Before Grace’s set, I shared a story about a sweet, sheltered suburban kid who spent his freshman year at shows instead of studying for class. (I lost my college scholarship, but, hey it worked out for me in the end.) Reinventing Axl Rose had just come out, but everyone knew every single word. In the small living room, the mass of bodies moved like high tide, pushing and pulling as we gleefully sang, “ ‘Cause, baby, I’m an anarchist / And you’re a spineless liberal.” We knew that the world can be rotten and cruel, yet could be beautiful, too, in how we fight for freedom together. At one point, the swell spilled over and I fell out the back door, then was quickly pulled back up because that’s what we do when someone falls.

Walking back to my dorm room afterward, beaming and bruised, I had a realization: Punk is complex and contradictory; it will fail and frustrate you… but it will also set you free. That paradox still haunts and challenges me, but I wear these songs — and all that have come after — like armor.

SET LIST

“I’m Not a Cop”
“All F***** Out”
“Supernatural Possession”
“Pints of Guinness Make You Strong”
“Black Me Out”

MUSICIANS

Laura Jane Grace: vocals, guitar
Paris Campbell Grace: vocals
Matt Patton: bass, vocals
Mikey Erg: drums, vocals

TINY DESK TEAM

Producer: Lars Gotrich
Director/Editor: Maia Stern
Audio Technical Director: Josephine Nyounai
Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Elizabeth Gillis
Audio Engineer: Carleigh Strange
Photographer: Estefania Mitre
Tiny Desk Team: Hazel Cills, Kara Frame, Ashley Pointer
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

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Mississippi

Mississippi River causes widespread flooding in Wabasha

Published

8 hours ago

July 2, 2024

Press Room

Mississippi River causes widespread flooding in Wabasha

WABASHA, Minn. (KTTC) – Many Minnesota communities living close to the Mississippi River faced flood warnings as water levels rose over the weekend. The city of Wabasha is one of the most significantly impacted areas with many streets and parks under water.

(Figure 1 of 2): Wabasha on Tuesday(KTTC)

“We had a flood here last year, and it was our fourth highest crest in history,” City of Wabasha Emergency Management Director Riley Castello said. “This one is about two feet shy of that.”

According to Castello, water levels at the river peaked on Monday; on Tuesday afternoon, it sat at 15-feet.

(Figure 1 of ): Mississippi River water levels on Tuesday at Wabasha(National Water Prediction Service)

“We’ve had to close down five of our major parks and a couple of streets in town.” Castello said.

Due to the severe weather and flooding, both the city and Wabasha County declared a local state of emergency, being one of the 22 counties approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a federal disaster declaration.

“It’s frustrating that we can’t just get in moderation. We just came out of a drought. Last year was incredibly dry and the river level was low comparatively. This year, we just can’t stop getting the rain. And now we have water standing in fields.”

According to the National Eagle Center, the severe weather did not significantly impact the amount of visitors it received. “Overall, I don’t think the number of visitors have been impacted by the weather,” Director of Marketing and Communications Ed Hahn said. “ Maybe a little bit when it rains, you get fewer people going out.”

Castello shared there are currently many uncertainties with how the flood waters will be cleared and the restoration process will undergo. He said property damage estimates cannot be determined until water levels go down.

“We gasped when we saw the flooding,” said Maria Gorde, who was in Wabasha on Tuesday for a visit. “We had seen it online, but seeing it in person was like, ‘Wow.’”

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