Memorial Planned Thursday At Burr Oak Marking 70th Anniversary Of Emmett Till's Death

The Friends of Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip will host a memorial wreath laying on the grave sites of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, on the 70th anniversary of his lynching death that sparked the Civil Rights movement.

The ceremony will take place at 12:30 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 28, in section Maplewood at Burr Oak Cemetery, 4400 W. 127th St., Alsip.

On August 28, 1955, Bronzeville-resident Emmett Till, visiting his great uncle in Money, MS, was roused out of bed in the middle of the night and kidnapped by two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, because Till had allegedly wolf-whistled at Bryant’s wife.

Till had been beaten throughout the night and was found submerged in the Mississippi River days later with a 75-pound gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire. Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury. The men later confessed to a Look magazine reporter their own version of the 14-year-old Chicago boy’s offenses. Till would be 84 years old today had he lived.

A stoic Mamie insisted that the casket containing her only son’s remains be left open because she wanted “the world to see what they did to my boy.” Photos of Emmett Till’s engorged face beaten beyond recognition appeared in Jet magazine, and introduced white Americans of the 1950s to the horror and inhumanity of the country’s racial conflict.

In the decades following her son’s murder, Mobley-Till became a teacher and sought-after speaker and Civil Rights activist. She urged Black Americans not to succumb to self-pity.

“We cannot afford the luxury of self-pity. Our top priority now is to get on with the building process. My personal peace has come through helping boys and girls reach beyond the ordinary and strive for the extraordinary,” Till-Mobley said. “We must teach our children to weather the hurricanes of life, pick up the pieces, and rebuild. We must impress upon our children that even when troubles rise to seven-point- one on life's Richter scale, they must be anchored so deeply that, though they sway, they will not topple.”

The Friends of Burr Oak are also endeavoring to get the historic Black cemetery and Till’s grave on the National Register of Historical Places in Illinois, and have started an online petition on Change.org.

For more information about the memorial ceremony or the petition to get on the National Register of Historical Places, email friendsofburroak@gmail.com.