President Joe Biden will welcome civil-rights leaders and victims of hate-fueled violence to the White House on Thursday for a screening of “Till,” a movie depicting the life of Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son Emmett Till, a Black teenager, was brutally lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden will welcome civil-rights leaders and victims of hate-fueled violence to the White House on Thursday for a screening of “Till,” a movie depicting the life of Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son Emmett Till, a Black teenager, was brutally lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
The president will also be joined by members of the Till family and actors from the film, according to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Last March, Biden signed a bill making lynching a federal hate crime, the culmination of a decades-long effort to secure such legislation. The law was named in honor of Till, whose murder at the age of 14 sparked outrage and fueled the civil rights movement after his mother held an open casket funeral to put the barbarous act on display.
Researchers have documented more than 4,000 lynchings of Black Americans in a dozen Southern states between 1877 and 1950, according to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative.
Read more: Biden Signs New U.S. Law Making Lynching a Federal Hate Crime
Producers contacted the White House to organize a screening of the movie, according to a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. First Lady Jill Biden’s office worked with the Office of Public Engagement, helmed by former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and other offices to organize the event, according to the official.
The screening follows an executive order Biden signed earlier Thursday that is intended to “strengthen the federal government’s ability to address the barriers that underserved communities continue to face,” according to a White House fact sheet.
The order directs agencies to produce an annual public Equity Action Plan that will assess actions to remove barriers that underserved communities face in accessing federal policies and programs, among other actions. It also directs agencies to focus efforts on emerging threats to civil rights, such as algorithmic discrimination, and to ensure agencies’ use of artificial intelligence advances equity concerns.
The White House event falls during Black History Month. Jean-Pierre said earlier this month that the administration would mark February by taking “time to celebrate the immeasurable contributions of Black Americans, honoring the legacies and achievements of generations past, reckoning with centuries of injustices, and confronting those injustices that are still so vividly in front of us today.”
Jean-Pierre is both the first Black person and openly-LGBTQ person to hold the role of White House press secretary.
The administration has previously hosted screenings of other films, including the documentary “Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness” and HBO’s “The Survivor,” about the life of Harry Haft, a boxer who survived the Holocaust.
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