Emmett Till’s childhood home granted preliminary landmark status

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks Thursday granted preliminary landmark status to the South Side home of Emmett Till, at 6427 S. St. Lawrence Ave. in Woodlawn. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Emmett Till’s home on the South Side has been granted preliminary landmark status.

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks Thursday granted the prestigious status to the home at 6427 S. St. Lawrence Ave. in Woodlawn where the Chicago teen lived before that fateful trip Down South that ended with his brutal lynching on Aug. 28, 1955.

It’s a bittersweet point in the years-long journey of preservationists and the Till family to landmark the home of the teen whose murder propelled the civil rights movement.

During a visit with relatives in Money, Mississippi, the 14-year-old was kidnapped from his uncle’s home in the middle of the night for allegedly whistling at a white woman at a grocery store. Till’s battered body was recovered on Aug. 31, 1955, from the Tallahatchie River. Barbed wire was wrapped around his neck, his face beaten beyond recognition, and his body weighted down with a cotton gin fan.

Plans for Till’s home, a 2,308-square-foot, brick two-flat, are up in the air.

While the current homeowner Blake McCreight joined community activists and others Thursday testifying in support of the landmark designation during the commission’s virtual meeting, he stipulated he is by no means wedded to the proposed purchase by a nonprofit in the same ward.

McCreight divulged that Blacks In Green founder Naomi Davis — who last November established the Mamie Till-Mobley Forgiveness Garden near the home, at the northwest corner of 64th Street and St. Lawrence Avenue — submitted a purchase proposal to him two days before. She seeks to turn the property into a museum and gallery space.

McCreight admitted he had no idea of the home’s history when he purchased it last year.

The commission’s unanimous landmark status vote and proposal will now wind its way to the City Council’s Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards before it goes to the City Council for approval. With Thursday’s vote, any owner of the home now will be prevented from demolition or changes to the building’s exterior.

The home is one of two Chicago sites in the Emmett Till Memory Project, which gives a virtual tour of national locations significant to the American tragedy.

The other site featured in the project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum & Library Services, is Roberts Temple Church of God In Christ, where Till’s historic open casket funeral was held on Sept. 3, 1955.

Mamie Till-Mobley and her son, Emmett Till, whose lynching in 1955 became a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.

The church was landmarked in 2006. But the home where Till lived before was murdered remained at risk of deterioration or demolition after the failure of previous landmark efforts. The city hadn’t ascribed any urgency to preserving the home.