(NEWSnet/AP) — President Joe Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday establishing a national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley.

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, located across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi, will be federally protected places. Till was a Black teenager from Chicago whose abduction, torture and killing during 1955 helped propel the civil rights movement

Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said the federal designation is a milestone in a years-long effort to preserve and protect places tied to events that have shaped the nation and that symbolize national wounds.

In the meantime, Till’s family members are among those who hope to raise money to restore the family sites and work toward inclusion in the National Park System.

In the summer of 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley put her 14-year-old son Emmett on a train to visit relatives in her native Mississippi. In the overnight hours of Aug. 28, 1955, Emmett was taken from his uncle’s home at gunpoint by two vengeful white men.

Emmett’s alleged offense was flirting with the wife of one of his kidnappers.

Three days later, a fisherman on the Tallahatchie River discovered the teenager’s body.

Till-Mobley demanded that Emmett’s mutilated remains be taken back to Chicago for a public, open casket funeral. Graphic images taken of the teenager's remains, sanctioned by his mother, were published by Jet magazine and helped to propel the civil rights movement.

Copyright 2023 NEWSnet and The Associated Press. All rights reserved.