A Tale of Two Mamies

Mamie Eisenhower in 1911, at the age of fifteen, just one year older than Emmett Till was at the time of his death several decades later.

Eisenhower Presidential Library

How can we understand the differences in American life in the 1950s? America's promise of equality and opportunity was not free to all. In the case of two Mamies, we see two vastly different experiences of the American dream in the mid-20th century.

Mamie Geneva Eisenhower ‘s (née Doud) and Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley's (née Carthan) lives were radically different from the very beginning. Mamie Doud, the last First Lady born in the nineteenth century, grew up in a wealthy family and enjoyed the best of everything money could buy. Mamie Carthan, the Civil Rights activist and educator, strove to achieve a middle-class life after many transitions during her childhood and young adulthood. Over the course of their lives, the two Mamies’ paths would diverge even further. However, they came together abruptly in the aftermath of Emmett Till’s horrific murder on August 28, 1955.

Mamie Doud was born on November 14, 1896, in Boone, Iowa. Her family moved to Denver, Colorado when she was seven years old. Her father, a highly successful meatpacking executive, retired comfortably at the age of thirty-six. Mamie and her sisters grew up wealthy, and Mamie attended etiquette classes and finishing school in Colorado. In fall 1915, Mamie met Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower in San Antonio, Texas. The two fell head over heels for each other and married in July 1916. Mamie became an Army wife, supporting her husband through his illustrious military career. She traveled all over the country and across the globe, utilizing her hosting and entertaining abilities to help Ike rise through the ranks. Ike entered politics in 1952 and was inaugurated as the President of the United States in January 1953. In 1955, Ike and Mamie were completing construction on their Gettysburg farm and home and enjoying their fast-paced lives as one of America’s most beloved President and First Lady couples.

Mamie Carthan was born on November 23, 1921, in Webb, Mississippi. When she was two years old, her family moved to Argo, Illinois as part of the Great Migration. Mamie visited her family in Mississippi during the summers, where she learned firsthand just how brutal Southern racism could be. Mamie was an excellent scholar, becoming the first Black student to achieve the “A” honor roll and the fourth Black student to graduate from the predominantly white Argo Community High School. At 18, Mamie married Louis Till. The couple had Emmett, their only child together, in 1941. During their short marriage, Mamie endured domestic violence from Till, against whom she eventually filed a restraining order. After Till’s death overseas in 1945, Mamie worked long hours in her secretarial jobs in Argo and Chicago, trying to provide for herself and her son as a single mother. Mamie briefly married “Pink” Bradley but divorced him two years later after suffering through yet more domestic abuse. Mamie is sometimes referred to as “Till-Bradley.” In 1957, Mamie married Gene Mobley and changed her surname to Till-Mobley. For clarity, we have used “Till-Mobley” to refer to Mamie through the rest of this article.

Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, pose for a photograph

Library of Congress

In 1955, Mamie reluctantly allowed Emmett to go to Money, Mississippi to visit his family for the summer. Before he left, Mamie coached her son on how to survive the bigotry and racism of the Deep South. In her book Death of Innocence, Mamie wrote that she struggled to “give a crash course in hatred to a boy who has only ever known love.” However, soon after Emmett arrived in Mississippi, a white woman named Carolyn Bryant accused him of making physical and verbal advances toward her in the grocery store her family owned. On August 28, Carolyn’s husband and brother-in-law, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, kidnapped Emmett from his great-uncle's house, tortured him, murdered him, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. On August 31, authorities located Emmett’s body.

On September 1, 1955, Till-Mobley sent a telegram to the White House pleading for Ike to “personally see that justice is meted out to all persons involved in the beastly lynching of my son...” The final line of Till-Mobley's telegram reads, “Awaiting a direct reply from you.” Till-Mobley would wait all her life for this reply, never receiving any word from President Eisenhower. On September 3, Mamie held an open casket funeral for Emmett, saying that she wanted the whole world to see what Bryant and Milam had done to her son.

Both the Eisenhowers and Till-Mobley's lives were shaped by the loss of their first sons. Ike and Mamie lost Doud “Ikky” Dwight in 1921 to scarlet fever. The tragedy was an open wound that would never quite heal. During WWII, Dwight wrote to Mamie reminiscing that if Ikky were still alive, he and Mamie might already be grandparents. As parents who had lost a child themselves, the Eisenhowers would have understood at least some of Mamie Till-Mobley's pain. However, Ike never responded to Till-Mobley's telegram. Neither Dwight nor Mamie Eisenhower spoke out on Emmett’s murder, either by condemning Emmett’s killers or comforting Till-Mobley. Instead, the couple chose to remain silent. According to Christopher D. Benson, the board president of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Institute, Till-Mobley was heartbroken at being ignored by President Eisenhower.

Till-Mobley wasn’t the only one President Eisenhower brushed aside. According to a January 6, 1956 White House memorandum, there were 3,000 wires, letters, and telegrams addressed to Ike regarding the Till case. Petitions to the president included 11,000 names.

Ike and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover decided against a federal investigation into Emmett’s death. Instead, they determined that the case fell under the jurisdiction of the state of Mississippi. An all-white Mississippi jury wrongfully acquitted Till’s murderers in September 1955. Protected by double jeopardy, the pair admitted to killing Emmett Till in 1956. In 2017, Carolyn Bryant Donham confessed that she had lied under oath, falsely claiming that Emmett had used foul language and touched her. In the end, Emmett died for the crime of being Black in Mississippi.

After the murder of her son, Mamie Till-Mobley went on to become a high-profile civil rights activist, speaking on tour with the NAACP. Emmett’s murder shocked the nation and drew attention to racial justice efforts, a cause to which Till-Mobley dedicated the rest of her life. By insisting on an open casket and fighting for widespread recognition of her son’s murder as an act of racial hatred, Till-Mobley would help spark the modern civil rights movement. She later attended Chicago Teacher’s College and Loyola University, graduating with her master’s in the 1970s. Alongside her civil rights activism, she taught as an elementary schoolteacher for two decades. Meanwhile, Mamie Eisenhower continued her service as the First Lady through Dwight Eisenhower’s second term and eventually settled into a comfortable retirement at the Eisenhower farm in Gettysburg, PA in 1961.

Today, both Mamie Till-Mobley and Mamie Eisenhower have National Park Service sites that tell their stories. At Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg, PA, the National Park Service preserves and interprets the stories of General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. The newly established Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Chicago, IL and Glendora and Sumner, MS honors the lives and legacies of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley. Once more, the paths of the two Mamies cross, this time in the form of lasting legacies that that impact our current American experience. These entwined stories of silence and speaking out help us understand the lingering effects of the Till murder on our nation today.