Moves made by Donald Trump’s administration could pave the way for the removal of a national monument honoring Emmett Till, an icon of the civil rights movement, risking a public outcry.
Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly led by tech boss Elon Musk, has recommended slashing the budget of the National Park Service by nearly $1 billion.
Meanwhile, a Justice Department opinion released earlier this month grants presidents the right to revoke the status of national monuments for the first time since the 1930s.
Together, the two steps could mean the demise of the Till memorial as part of Trump’s drive to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) values from public institutions, a culture war that has seen him attack the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., for promoting “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” and attempt to remould the Kennedy Center according to his own tastes, among other targets.
“We are seeing this effort to erase and reverse history and historic preservation,” historian Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources and government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, told CBS News.
“This is turning quickly into a dream deferred.”
Till, a Black Chicagoan, was just 14 when he was kidnapped in Mississippi on the night of August 28, 1955, by two white men who accused him of behaving disrespectfully towards a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her grocery store earlier in the day as he visited family in the town of Money.
The assailants were Bryant’s husband, Roy, and his half-brother, John W Milam, who beat, tortured, and eventually murdered Till, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River, from which it was recovered three days later.
He was buried in Chicago, with his mother, Mamie, insisting on an open casket funeral while his killers went on to be acquitted by an all-white jury.
Remembered as a martyr to racial prejudice in America by the civil rights marchers of the 1960s and immortalised in song by Bob Dylan, Till was finally awarded a monument dedicated to his memory and that of his mother by Joe Biden in 2023.
The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument covers three sites: Graball Landing in Mississippi, where Emmett’s body was found; Sumner in the same state, where Bryant and Miliam were tried in the local courthouse; and Chicago’s Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Illinois, where the boy’s funeral service was held.
Spears and his colleagues were influential voices in seeking federal protection for those sites, which was granted by Biden and could now be stripped away by Trump.
“Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else’s son ever again,” the historian said in appealing for their upkeep.
He likened the proposed DOGE cuts to the National Parks Service to “amputating an arm for a hangnail.”
Former National Park Service director Chuck Sams, who left his role earlier this year, said the loss of the Till memorial 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 said.
“And we, as Americans, have never been actually scared to do so, and I don’t think we should be now. We look at our past, and we know that from our past mistakes that we have become stronger.”
Other sites reportedly being considered for removal include the Chuckwalla and Sattitla Highlands national monuments in California, and the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona, the latter due to its reputed uranium resources.
White House spokesperson Anne Kelly responded to the threat to the monuments in a statement in which she said: “Under President Trump’s leadership, [Interior] 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.
“The president is simultaneously following through on his promise to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ and restore American energy dominance.”
