Who was Emmett Till and what happened to his killers?

Joe Biden designates memorial to black teenager who was murdered in 1955

An undated portrait shows Emmett Till, the 14-year-old from Chicago who was visiting relatives in Mississippi in August 1955 when he was kidnapped, tortured and killed after witnesses heard him whistle at a white woman. Till's mother insisted on an open-casket funeral, and 'Jet' magazine published photos of his brutalised body. AP

Mamie Till Mobley weeps at her son's funeral on September 6, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois. The mother of Emmett Till insisted that her son's body be displayed in an open casket forcing the nation to see the brutality directed at blacks in the south at the time. Chicago Sun-Times / AP

Emmett Till's photo is seen on his grave marker in Alsip, Illinois. AP

A sign marking where police recovered the body of 14 -year-old Emmett Till is displayed in the entryway of the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington. The marker is one of three replaced at the site where police found Till and is a new addition to the permanent collection at the museum. Getty Images / AFP

A Mississippi Freedom Trail marker sits before the remains of Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till was accused of whistling at a white woman. AP

A private property sign near what was Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi. AP

A large crowd gathers outside the Roberts Temple Church of God In Christ in Chicago, September 6, 1955, as pallbearers carry the casket of Emmett Till. AP

Four-year-old Senty Banutu-Gomez holds a photograph of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy who was lynched in 1955, on the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Reuters

Representative Bobby Rush speaks during a news conference about the Emmett Till Antilynching Act on Capitol Hill in Washington. AP

Radio host Joe Madison hugs Representative Bobby Rush as they arrive for a bill enrolment ceremony for the Emmett Till Antilynching Act in Washington. Getty Images / AFP

Deborah Watts and Priscilla Sterling, cousins of Emmett Till, show a document used by Mississippi Attorney General Office representative Wayne Lynch to indicate receipt of a poster and accompanying thumb drive that reportedly holds almost 300,000 signatures on a petition seeking a renewed investigation into Till's 1955 lynching. AP

Deborah Watts, a cousin of Emmett Till, holds a poster and the thumb drive. AP

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signs HR 55, the 'Emmett Till Antilynching Act', which designates lynching as a hate crime under federal law, during a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, with Democratic Representatives Bennie Thompson, Joyce Beatty, Bobby Rush, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and radio host Joe Madison. AP

President Joe Biden has designated a national monument to honour Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched in 1955.

Till's death helped spark the nation's civil rights movement, in part because his mother held an open-casket funeral so the world could see the horrors that a racist-inspired murder had wrought on her son.

Mr Biden's national monument designation comes at a time when the US again grapples with its history of racism.

Who was Emmett Till?

Emmett was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago. He was visiting relatives in rural Mississippi in the summer of 1955 when he was kidnapped, beaten and shot dead by racist vigilantes after being accused of flirting with Ms Donham in a grocery store.

He and some other local children had visited the store where Ms Donham, then 21, was working alone. She said at the time he had propositioned her and touched her on the arm, hand and waist.

Emmett's disfigured body was found a few days later in a river.

His murder in Mississippi helped ignite the civil rights movement, in part because his mother held an open-coffin funeral, with a photo of her son's mangled remains appearing in the press.

Ms Donham died on Tuesday, according to the Calcasieu Parish coroner's office. She was the last living person directly involved in the case.

What happened to Emmett's killers?

Emmett's death and an all-white jury's dismissal of charges against two white men who later confessed to his killing drew national attention to the atrocities and violence that African Americans faced in the US.

Ms Donham's then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, John W Milam, were charged in Emmett's murder and put on trial in 1955. The jury acquitted both men after Ms Donham gave evidence that Emmett had grabbed her waist and made sexual remarks at the store.

The men later confessed in a paid magazine interview that they had killed Emmett. Mr Bryant died in 1994 and Mr Milam died in 1981.

In 2021, the US Justice Department closed its reopened investigation into Ms Donham's role in the murder following the publication of a book whose author wrote that she told him she had lied about Emmett making sexual advances.

The department said it could not prove Ms Donham had ever made that confession — though it added that there was “considerable doubt as to the credibility of her version of events”.

In 2022, a grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict her for kidnapping or manslaughter. A few weeks before the grand jury's decision, a 1955 arrest warrant for Ms Donham on a charge of kidnapping Emmett, which had never been served, was located.

Christopher Benson, a journalist and lawyer who co-wrote a 2004 book about Emmett's murder with the boy's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and continues to work with the family and others on the case, said it was regrettable nobody could ever be held accountable.

But he said that it is crucial for people to continue to seek to understand what the crime tells us about racial injustice in the US.

“The challenge to us in this contemporary moment is to step up and continue to derive meaning from this story in order to truly be engaged citizens and work for social justice,” Benson said.

Agencies contributed to this report