A sign that acts as a landmark for where Emmett Till‘s badly beaten and decomposed body was found 53 years ago was stolen. A second sign was riddled with bullets and a third sign was shot at four times.
According to The Washington Post, the sign, which continually gets defaced, was erected by the Emmett Till Interpretative Center, a museum, which is supported by the Tallahatchie County. People come to visit the sign, outside of Glendora, Mississippi as the last stop on a civil rights tour across the Mississippi Delta.
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Center co-founder Patrick Weems said the reason why the sign continues to get destroyed is that the root for Till’s death has never been properly dealt with.
“We didn’t deal with the root reasons in 1955, and we’re still having to deal with that,” Weems said. “The same systems that allowed these signs to be vandalized are the same systems that allowed Emmett Till to be murdered.”
While visiting family in Mississippi in 1955, Till was kidnapped from his bedroom, tortured, beaten and shot before his body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River. After his body was discovered, his mother Mamie Till opted to have an open casket funeral showcasing her son’s deformed body.
It took an all-white jury an hour to acquit Roy Bryant and his brother J.W. Milam of Till’s murder, only for the two to then confess to their crime a year later in a local publication. It’s largely believed Emmitt Till’s death helped to jump-start the Civil Rights Movement.