Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Vandals Destroy 2nd Emmett Till Historical Marker in 9 Months

The Emmett Till historical sign has been scraped almost completely of text and photographs. It was erected in 2011, the first on the Mississippi Freedom Trail. (Photo: Courtesy of Cultural Leadership)
The Emmett Till historical sign has been scraped almost completely of text and photographs. It was erected in 2011, the first on the Mississippi Freedom Trail. (Photo: Courtesy of Cultural Leadership)

*A historical marker with information about Emmett Till has been vandalized, the second such occurrence against a memorial for him in less than nine months.

A Mississippi Freedom Trail sign in Money, where 14-year-old Till was kidnapped and killed in 1955, had some of its words and photos scraped off by Monday morning.

In October, another historical marker where Till’s body was found was riddled with bullets.

“This time, it’s more sinister because it’s carefully thought out. It’s not a defacing, but an erasing,” the Emmett Till Memory Project’s Davis Houck told The Jackson Clarion-Ledger of the latest incident.

The sign, put up in 2011, is located outside Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, the now-closed store where a white shopkeeper, Carolyn Bryant, accused the teen of whistling at her.

Till was tortured and killed, and his death and the acquittal of two white men put on trial for his murder galvanized the civil rights movement.

Bryant recently admitted that she made up evidence during the trial and the attackers, her husband Roy Bryant and his brother J.W. Milam, later admitted to the killing.

Allan Hammons, whose company made the Bryant’s Grocery sign, said that the marker cost more than $8,000 to make, and that repairs for the damaged words will be at least $500.

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