Church that held Emmett Till’s funeral now listed on U.S. endangered historic places

Till’s open-casket service at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ sent shockwaves across the nation.

Sep 24, 2020

The Chicago church where Emmett Till’s open-casket funeral sent shockwaves across the nation is now listed as one of the nation’s most endangered places.

Till’s extended visitation and funeral service, held at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ on Sept. 3-6, 1955, saw an estimated 100,000 people.

The 14-year-old’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley pushed for an open-casket funeral to allow the world to see her son’s horribly mutilated condition after his lynching.

This 2005 photo shows a picture of Emmett Till included on the plaque on his gravesite at Burr Oak Cemetery in Aslip, Illinois. His unsolved 1955 murder in Money, Mississippi, after accusations of whistling at a white woman helped spark the civil rights movement. The woman, Carolyn Donham, admitted later she’d lied. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Till-Mobley, at the time, said: “Let the world see what they did to my boy.”

The tragic yet unprecedented event and a photo of Till in his casket published in Jet magazine is credited as being a catalyst for America’s civil rights movement.

According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a D.C.-based nonprofit organization, the church has severe structural issues now.

“To now see that this iconic church is now on the endangered list … it’s metaphoric to what we’re seeing in our democracy today,” Keith Beauchamp, director of the 2005 documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, told USA Today. “It is quite disturbing considering how much a landmark that church is for Chicago and the symbolism of what it stands for.”

Currently, the church is only minimally used by the congregation and needs rehabilitation funding and partnerships.

More than 300 places have been listed on the nation’s most endangered places list in the organization’s 33-year history, and in that time, fewer than 5 percent of listed sites have been lost.

The Chicago-born Till’s disfigured corpse was found three days after Carolyn Donham claimed Till, there in Money to visit family, grabbed and whistled at her while she worked in the country shop owned by her husband, Roy Bryant. Bryant and J.W. Milam, his half-brother, were identified by Till’s great uncle as the men who forced the teen into their car, taken from the elder’s home, but the two were found not guilty of murder by an all-white jury in a segregated courthouse. A 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” contains Donham’s admission in 2008 that her accusations were lies.

In a New York Times essay published after his death, the late Rep. John Lewis wrote about the effect Till’s murder had on him.

“Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor,” Lewis wrote. “He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me.”

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