A 'small but necessary step': Emmett Till's Chicago home granted preliminary landmark status

CHICAGO – The home of Emmett Till was granted preliminary landmark status Thursday, less than a week after thousands of people rallied in the nation's capital on the 65th anniversary of his murder to call for policing and voting rights reforms.

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks unanimously voted to approve preliminary status for the two-flat Woodlawn home on the city's South Side, where Till moved with his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and her husband when he was ten years old.

Nearly four years later, in August of 1955, Till, then 14, was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi, when he was brutally lynched after being accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store. Two men were later acquitted on murder charges, and a grand jury refused to indict them on kidnapping charges. Years later, the white woman involved in the incident said she had been lying when she claimed Till had touched her.

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Till’s mother drew international attention to racism in the U.S. when she decided to hold a public, open casket viewing in Chicago and gave permission to the Black press to photograph her son's mutilated remains, fueling a generation of civil rights activists.

"Till's horrific murder and his killers' acquittals elevated the civil rights movement worldwide," Chicago's Department of Planning and Development said on Twitter Thursday. "His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, continued to live in the home into the 1960s while working tirelessly to advance the civil rights agenda and honor the legacy of her only child."

In a letter of support for the landmark designation, the Society of Architectural Historians Heritage Conservation Committee noted that few of the physical places associated with Till's murder still stand. The grocery store where Till was accused of whistling has "collapsed into a ruin," and a nearby gas station has been demolished and rebuilt, the society said.

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"The house in which Till was raised is of national, even international, significance, as the physical place most associated with his life," the group wrote. "As our country goes through a painful soul-searching in reaction to the murders of George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and so many others, granting this dignity and reverence to the place where Emmett Till was raised is a small but necessary step toward national acknowledgment of the violence that has long defined the Black experience in America."

Preservation Chicago, an activist group that has been advocating landmark status for the home since at least 2017, cheered the vote in a Facebook post.

"This is a monumental moment for Chicago," the group wrote. "The Till home will be a pilgrimage site for African American history."

The Emmett Till Memory Project, a website and app that offers virtual tours of key landmarks in Till’s life, includes the home in its list of Chicago locations. The project is hosted by the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi.

"Commemorating the home of Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till helps us better understand the importance of respectful narrative sharing," said Benjamin Saulsberry, museum director at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. "So often, we are pulled into the remembrance of Mamie and Emmett by his tragic murder, but seldom do we look to structures and examples that speaks to their lives as residents of a town and members of a community."

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When thousands of people attended the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington last Friday, held on the anniversary of Till''s lynching, many invoked Till's legacy.

Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris made a virtual appearance at the march in a brief video segment, calling on participants to learn from the work of the late Rep. John Lewis, who was inspired to pursue a path of justice in the wake of Till's death.

"As John put it, Emmett Till was my George Floyd," Harris said. "He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor."

The proposal must also pass Chicago's City Council for full designation.