Once again, an Emmett Till marker is vandalized in Mississippi

In October, a Mississippi historical marker for Emmett Till was riddled with bullet holes in a savage act of vandalism.

Now, less than a year later, a second state historical marker has been defaced, obliterating information about the black teenager whose name became a civil rights rallying cry after he was kidnapped and lynched in 1955.

The slaying galvanized the movement when Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, had an open-casket funeral in Chicago to show how her son had been brutalized while visiting the Mississippi Delta.

The sign was erected in 2011 for the Mississippi Freedom Trail, a series of state-funded markers at civil rights sites. It stands within yards of the business — Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market — where Carolyn Bryant, 21, a white shopkeeper, alleged that Till, 14, offended her by whistling.

“Who knows what motivates people to do this?” Allan Hammons, owner of a public relations firm that produced the sign located in Money, Miss. “Vandals have been around since the beginning of time.”

A separate Till marker, near the site where his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, has been repeatedly shot. It was erected by a private group, and money has been raised to replace it.

Hammons said the sign defacement involved someone pulling “vinyl panels” with words and images of Till off the back of the marker, he said.

An all-white jury acquitted Bryant’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, in the killing, but the two men later confessed in a paid interview with Look magazine.

Roy and Carolyn Bryant divorced. He and Milam have died. She remarried and became Carolyn Donham.

She told Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University research scholar, in 2008 that she falsely testified, when jurors were outside the courtroom, that Till had physically and verbally threatened her.