Seventy years ago, the nation watched as thousands of mourners viewed the body of Emmett Till during a packed funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville.
Some mourners fainted after seeing the 14-year-old teenager’s mutilated face, which was protected under a glass panel.
Outside the church, thousands more Black people crowded State Street to glimpse Till’s casket as it was placed into a hearse.
It was a pivotal moment in American history, and part of the enduring legacy of Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ at 4021 South State Street.
Today, decades after the brutal murder of the Black teenager helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement, efforts are underway to restore the church to its appearance on September 4, 1955. That day, Roberts Temple became part of a painful chapter in history as the location where thousands viewed the disfigured body of a murdered boy.
Once on the endangered list of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the building became part of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in 2023 under President Joseph Biden. In 2022, Senator Dick Durbin and United States Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland held community meetings to gather input from residents before the site was designated a national monument.
The new national monument also includes the Tallahatchie County Courthouse and Graball Landing in Mississippi, where Till’s body was discovered after two white men murdered him.
Now a site overseen by the National Park Service, the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ restoration is well underway. It is being funded by the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project. The Action Fund has contributed at least $750,000 toward restoring the historic structure.
The restoration project consists of two phases. The first phase occurred in 2024, when workers removed a tan façade that was added in 1992 during a major renovation. That layer concealed the church’s original red-brick masonry, narrow windows, and several crosses—features visible in black-and-white photographs from 1955. Two large windows that had been filled in with glass blocks were returned to their original condition. Workers also removed an angular roofline that had covered the church’s original curved roofline.
Sharon Roberts Hayes, great-granddaughter of the church’s founder, Bishop William Roberts, is working with a construction firm and the Boston-based MASS Design Group on the project.
Hayes said a replica of the original cross-shaped marquee will be installed on the church’s façade as the final touch to restoring the original exterior.
“It’s important that my family legacy live on in this church,” Hayes said.
Cleven Wardlow, the current pastor of Roberts Temple, offered a Crusader journalist a tour of the building.
“I wasn’t here when all that happened, I was eleven years old, but as far as the work that’s going on right now, I welcome it.”
In 2024, workers discovered a time capsule behind a plaque on the church’s storefront. Descendants of Bishop Roberts opened a box bound with duct tape and found photographs, newspaper clippings, and prayers from church members—items left behind during the 1992 renovation.
The second phase of the restoration has not yet begun. It will involve restoring the sanctuary’s original flat ceiling and reinstalling the north and south balconies on the second floor. These features were altered or removed during the 1992 renovation. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the balconies were added in 1944 to increase seating capacity by 50 percent.
The dropped ceiling that currently covers the sanctuary will be removed, and the original ceiling will be fully restored. In the meantime, netting has been installed beneath the ceiling to catch falling debris that occasionally lands in the pews.
Hayes said the sanctuary’s full restoration will cost between $10 million and $16 million. A fundraising campaign is underway to support the effort.
Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ was founded in 1916 by Bishop William Roberts. Before the current structure was completed in 1922, the congregation worshipped in several other buildings in Bronzeville. The church eventually became known as the “Mother Church” of a Pentecostal movement that saw explosive growth in Black communities across Chicago and the United States.
Mamie Till-Mobley was a member of Roberts Temple.
On August 20, 1955, she saw her son alive for the last time as he boarded a train to Money, Mississippi, to visit his cousins Simeon Wright and Wheeler Parker Jr., and his great-aunt Elizabeth Wright and her husband, Mose Wright.
After picking cotton one day, Emmett and his cousins went into town to shop at Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market. Emmett bought two cents’ worth of candy from Carolyn Bryant, a young white woman who co-owned the store with her husband, Roy Bryant. According to one eyewitness, Emmett whistled at her, though some reports dispute this.
In response, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, arrived at Mose Wright’s home early Sunday morning on August 28. Despite protests from Wright and Mose, the men abducted Emmett, put him in a pickup truck, and drove away.
Three days later, on August 31, a bloated body with a badly beaten face was found in the Tallahatchie River. It had been tied to a cotton gin fan with barbed wire. Mose Wright identified the body as Emmett’s after finding a ring that had belonged to Emmett’s father.
Authorities initially wanted to bury Emmett in Mississippi, but Mamie Till-Mobley insisted that her son’s body be returned to Chicago.
At A.A. Rayner Funeral Home, Till-Mobley requested an open-casket funeral to show the world what had been done to her son.
On September 2, 1955, the first day of Emmett’s public viewing, an estimated 5,000 people paid their respects, according to the city’s historic preservation report.
As part of four days of viewing, Till-Mobley held her son’s funeral on Sunday, September 4, 1955, at Roberts Temple, where she was a member. Bishop Isaiah Leon Roberts, the son of the church’s founder, officiated. Bishop Henry Ford gave the eulogy.
According to the church’s website, approximately 1,700 people filled the sanctuary during the service. Another 10,000 stood outside on State Street, listening over loudspeakers.
Inside, Emmett’s body lay in a black suit under a glass panel. One report noted that one in five mourners had to be escorted from the building after nearly fainting.
Due to the overwhelming number of people hoping to view Emmett’s body, Till-Mobley delayed the burial for two days. An estimated 25,000 people viewed the body on Saturday, September 3, 1955. More than 100,000 filed past his casket during the three days before his burial on Tuesday, September 6, 1955, at Burr Oak Cemetery in suburban Alsip.
In Mississippi, Roy Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury after a trial that lasted just one hour. The two men later confessed to kidnapping and murdering Emmett in a Look magazine article. However, due to double jeopardy, they could not be tried again.
Till-Mobley spent the remainder of her life seeking justice for her son. She died in Chicago in 2003 and is buried next to him at Burr Oak Cemetery.
In 2007, Carolyn Bryant admitted to a Duke University historian that she had lied in court about Emmett making verbal and physical advances.
In 2018, the United States Department of Justice reopened its investigation but closed the case in 2021, stating there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges despite Bryant’s admission.
In June 2022, some of Emmett’s relatives and researchers found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on kidnapping charges in the Leflore County, Mississippi, courthouse.
Roy Bryant died in 1994. J.W. Milam died in 1980. Carolyn Bryant Donham, the last living link to Emmett Till’s murder, died in 2023.