The small town of Greenwood, Miss., will reveal a nine-foot statue of Emmett Till today while also having an extensive confederate monument, the Associated Press reports. This is more than fifty years after two white men kidnapped and lynched the Black teenager for whistling at a white woman.
Greenwood and Leflore County both have a population that’s 70% Black. Officials have worked for years to bring the Till statue to fruition. Democratic state Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood secured $150,000 in state funding. The community also commissioned Utah artist Matt Glenn to create the statue. Jordan hopes the statue will increase tourism in Greenwood and learn more about the area’s history.
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“So much has been said about this case,” Jordan said this week. “Hopefully, it will bring all of us together.”
Till’s statue at Greenwood’s Rail Spike Park will be a short drive from an elaborate Confederate monument outside the Leflore County Courthouse. It will also be ten miles away from the remains of the store, Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, where the whistling incident took place.
There is also a life-sized statue of Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother, planned in the Chicago suburb of Summit. An Oct. 28 groundbreaking is set for a plaza outside Argo Community High School, where she was an honor student. The statue is scheduled to be in place by late April.
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