USA TODAY International Edition
Emmett Till marker vandalized
JACKSON A historical sign the recognizing black teen who was beaten and killed in Mississippi in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman has been vandalized, with information about the teen removed.
Most of the text and photographs on the Emmett Till sign outside the former store where the incident reportedly happened were scraped off the sign.
“This time, it’s not someone with a shotgun or somebody trying to run over or tear down the sign,” said Davis Houck, a member of the Emmett Till Memory Project. “This time, it’s more sinister because it’s carefully thought out. It’s not a defacing, but an erasing.”
The sign was the first erected on the Mississippi Freedom Trail by state tourism officials in 2011.
Till has been dead for more than 60 years, but he has never been more alive in the American consciousness, most recently when NBA star LeBron James mentioned the courage of Till’s mother after his own home became the target of a racist attack.
“Emmett Till has become this stand- in for awful civil rights abuse,” said Houck, Fannie Lou Hamer professor of rhetorical studies at Florida State University.
Till’s killers were never convicted. The African- American teenager from Chicago, who was visiting family in Mississippi, was killed three days after he reportedly wolf- whistled at a white woman.
The teen’s body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River, a 75- pound gin fan tied to his neck. He had been brutally beaten and shot in the head.
To show the horror done to her son, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, told the funeral home to leave the casket open.
Allan Hammons, whose company handled the installation and maintenance of the markers, said this is the first time a sign has been attacked like this.
He said the sign, which cost $ 8,500 to erect, will be replaced for a cost of less than $ 500 and that authorities hope to find the perpetrators. Hammons said someone scratched the marker with a blunt tool in May. During the past week, a tour group discovered vinyl panels had been peeled off the back of the metal marker in Money, Miss.