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US President Joe Biden dedicated a new national monument to Emmett Till, whose violent lynching in 1955 helped jump start the Civil Rights Movement.

Till was kidnapped and murdered by two white men in Mississippi who accused him of whistling and making sexual advances to a white woman.

Till was abducted from his relatives’ home by two white men, Roy Bryant and John William Milam. He was brutally beaten before being killed and dumped in the Tallahatchie River.

In her opening remarks on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris called the lynching ‘an act of astonishing violence and hate.’

President Biden signed the proclamation creating the national monument surrounded by the surviving members of Till’s family.

Biden praised the Till family: ‘We thank you for your courage, for never giving up.’

He continued: ‘Telling the truth and the full history of our nation is important. It’s important to our children, our grandchildren, to our nation as a whole.’

Biden praised Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who decided to have an open-casket funeral for her son so that photos of her son’s treatment could be seen by the rest of the country.

‘Imagine the courage it took to say “let them see,”‘ Biden said.

Biden also praised black journalists, who were instrumental in bringing Till’s story to the nation at-large.

‘The reason the world saw what Mrs Till-Mobley saw is due to another hero in this story: the black press,’ the president said. According to Biden, publications like Jet Magazine and the Chicago Defender ‘told the story, unflinching, and making sure America saw what they saw.’

Till was only 14 when he was lynched. The new monument was dedicated on Tuesday, which would have been his 82nd birthday.

It will consist of three historic sites in Chicago, Illinois, Sumner, Mississippi, and Glendale, Mississippi.

The first site in Mississippi will be located at Graball Landing on the Tallahatchie River, where Till’s disfigured body was discovered three days after his death.

The second will be dedicated at Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where Till’s murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury in September 1955.

The Chicago monument will be located at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, where thousands gathered for Till’s open-casket funeral.

Historic sites and monuments erected to Till have been vandalized in the past. A sign erected at Graball Landing has been defaced by gunfire multiple times since it was erected in 2008.

The new designation turns the sites into federal property, which means any act of vandalism would be investigated by federal law enforcement.

Over the last year, Republicans have lead contentious efforts around the country to control education on sensitive topics, including black history.

Last week, a Florida school board approved a new African-American history curriculum that taught middle school students the ‘benefits’ of slavery.

Specifically, the curriculum states that under slavery, ‘slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is currently campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, defended the curriculum.

‘They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,’ DeSantis said on Friday.

In her remarks on Tuesday, Vice President Harris seemed to address DeSantis directly: ‘Today there are those in our nation who prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past, those who attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery.’

‘As patriots, we know that we must remember and teach our full history. Even when it is painful. Especially when it is painful,’ she said.

The Vice President continued: ‘Those who insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, who try to divide our nation with unnecessary debates. Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget.’

President Biden also addressed these controversies: ‘At a time when there are those that seek to ban books and bury history, we’re making it clear – crystal, crystal clear.’

Biden continued: ‘While darkness and denialism can hide much, they erase nothing. We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know. We should know everything – the good, the bad, and the truth.’

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