The “Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2021” passed by both the Senate and House of Representatives on Wednesday, Dec. 21, as the Congressional Record shows, and now sits on President Joe Biden’s desk for final approval. Emmett Till, 14, was brutally murdered in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman in August 1955.
The act makes lynching a federal crime, where those convicted will face up to 30 years in prison. Also, the Congress will posthumously honor both mother and son with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor government can bestow, seven decades after Till’s horrific lynching. The medal will be on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, near his casket, according to NPR.
The bill was pushed through both branches of Congress, when a motion passed the bill in the House, almost a year after the Senate unanimously passed it in January. The lawmakers agreed to the bill becoming law “without objection.”
The death of young Emmett Till is considered one of the pivotal markers of the civil rights movement. The bravery of the teen’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, in the mid-1950s in exposing what had been done to her son helped jump-start African-Americans’ fight for equality by showing in graphic detail the horror of racial violence in the Jim Crow South.
