Hi, this is Jen Rubin. Welcome to Jen Rubin's Green Room. This week we have an extraordinary guest, someone I've gotten to know over the years, in her many roles as MSNBC guest,

as a law professor, as a former counselor to the mayor of New York City, as now the head of one of the

premier organizations for civil and human rights in the United States, the Leadership Conference,

and really as a voice of clarity and historical perspective, we have today, Maya Wiley.

And I think we are at a very confusing time. On one hand, we have President Biden signing an

initiative to create a memorial for Emmett Till.

On the other hand, we had these state-led efforts in Florida, frankly, but elsewhere, to

eviscerate African-American history.

So without further ado, Maya, welcome to the show.

Oh, it's great to be with you, Jan.

We, as I was telling my audience,

we go back a few years and you've had many roles, many hats. Now you're a CEO of arguably

the premier civil rights organization in the United States. And because of that role,

you get to do very cool things. And as we are

taping this, you come directly from, I believe, a ceremony involving Emmett Till. Tell us about that.

Yeah, the White House today, the vice president president, they had already announced that there would be a monument

erected both in Mississippi and in Illinois to remember both Emmett Till, the 14-year-old,

who was brutally lived in Chicago, but traveled to Mississippi to visit relatives, and was brutally murdered at the age of 14,

a badly maimed, thrown in a river.

And his mother's spent a lifetime, both trying to get him justice, but also in a very, very brave, courageous, devastating, traumatic, and important moment,

made a decision to keep his coffin open at his funeral because he said they need to see what they

did to my baby. Everybody should see what they did to my baby. And remember, his transgression

...