A sign dedicated to 1950s lynching victim Emmett Till has been riddled with bullet holes in Mississippi — about a month after it was put up, according to reports.
Another sign in the same spot disappeared in 2008, about a year after it was erected. A second sign was then put up in 2013, only to be taken down earlier this year when it was defaced by dozens of bullet holes.
This third marker stands in the same spot — where the black teenager’s battered, barely recognizable body was plucked from the Tallahatchie River, strapped to a 75-pound cotton-gin fan, in 1955.
Fourteen-year-old Till was murdered by two white men, Rob Bryant and his brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, on Aug. 28, 1955, all for supposedly whistling at a white woman in the Jim Crow South.
The killers were acquitted by a jury made up of all white men who deliberated for less than an hour.
About 50 years later, markers related to the teen’s death started being put up around the state. A highway also was named after him in 2005.
When the first sign was put up by the river in Glendora, Miss., and stolen, Dave Tell, author of the upcoming book “Remembering Emmett Till,” said tire tracks were discovered leading from the site to the riverbank. This led local Sheriff William Brewer to conclude that the sign had been tossed in the river, just like Till’s body was — “an irony not lost on the black community,” he told the Clarion Ledger.
The latest sign was shot up July 26, just 35 days after being erected. A professor from nearby Delta University found it riddled with four gunshots.
“For 50 years, our community lived in silence, and there’s those who want to erase history,” Patrick Weems, co-founder of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center museum, told CNN. “We’ve been through that.”
“Whether it was racially motivated or just pure ignorance, it’s still unacceptable,” he added. “It’s a stark reminder that racism still exists.”
The center is committed to replacing the sign again — but Tell believes it’s best to leave it up as is.
“The bullet holes bear eloquent witness to the fact that work remains to be done,” he said, “that the memory of Till’s murder still cuts a rift through the heart of the modern-day Delta.”
The Tallahatchie County Sheriff’s Office said they did not know of any arrests or findings related to any of the signs.
The state historical marker of the Ku Klux Klan’s 1964 killing of three civil rights leaders has suffered a fate similar to the Till sign’s — repeatedly torn down and vandalized, according to the Clarion Ledger.
