Emmett Till National Monument Could Lose Designation

Last week, the Department of Justice issued a legal opinion reversing nearly 100 years of legal precedent by allowing the president to revoke national monument designations if he feels the protection isn’t warranted. There’s growing concern among activists and former national parks officials that this ruling, along with proposed budget cuts and an executive order targeting “improper ideology” in national parks and museums, could result in the closure of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument along with several other monuments dedicated to the civil rights movement. 

According to CBS News, the opinion comes as the Trump administration also seeks to cut nearly $1 billion in funding for the national parks and monuments. The opinion reverses a 1938 determination that monuments created by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act can’t be revoked. As a result of the ruling and proposed budget cuts, there’s concern that the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monuments could be at risk of closure should the monument designation be revoked or its funding be cut.

The Emmett Till monument is still fairly recent, having only been given the national monument designation in 2023 during the Biden administration. The designation came after a years-long fight by Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources and government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, and several other community leaders.

“His badly decomposed body was taken from the water, and officials in this area wanted to have him buried immediately to sort of get rid of the evidence,” Spears explained to CBS. “His mother insisted that he’d be sent back to Chicago, where they had an open casket funeral. And images of Till’s badly decomposed body in that open casket really sparked the modern civil rights movement.”

The monument consists of three sites: Graball Landing in Mississippi where Emmett’s body was found; Sumner, Mississippi, where Till’s confessed killers were tried and found not guilty in the local courthouse; and Chicago’s Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Illinois, where Till’s open casket funeral was held. 

Spears told CBS News the monument was necessary to “make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else’s son ever again.”

This new ruling allows Trump to close and remove any monument that he feels doesn’t present America in the best light. Given the Trump administration’s tendency to use diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as a catchall term to assault anything that celebrates Black people, concerns around national monuments dedicated to Black history are more than warranted. 

It doesn’t help that White House spokesperson Anne Kelly basically confirmed that this was the plan in a statement sent to CBS News.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, Secretary [Doug] Burgum is keeping our parks ready for peak season, ensuring they are in pristine condition for visitors, and restoring truth and sanity to depictions of American history in line with the President’s Executive Order,” Kelly wrote. 

“Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” the executive order Kelly made reference to, demands the removal of “improper ideology” from national museums.

It also ordered a review to “determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” 

Given that the designation for the Emmett Till National Monument was given in 2023, it would be included in that review. 

The order has already spurred concerns about the removal of several exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. “We are seeing this effort to erase and reverse history and historic preservation,” Spears told CBS News. “This is turning quickly into a dream deferred.”

Former National Park Service Director Chuck Sams was involved in the designation of five national monuments under the Biden administration, including the Emmett Till monument. He strongly disagrees with the Trump administration’s approach and believes that the potential closure of the Till monument would be “very sad and egregious.”

“People don’t like to look at their past when it shows a negative light of who we are, and I can understand that nobody likes to look at their own personal past that may have a negative light, but we also know that in order to learn from our own history, we also have to learn from our past mistakes,” Sams told CBS News. 

In addition to the Till monuments, quite a few of our national monuments are designed specifically to spotlight the sins of America’s past. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was made into a national monument in 2024 and is used to teach about America’s questionable methods of assimilating Native Americans.

In that same year, President Biden also designated the site of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot, where a group of white people burned down apartment homes in a predominantly Black neighborhood, as a national monument. Work is still in progress on the monument, and with the proposed budget cuts and executive order, it’s unclear if that work will be finished. 

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