It has been just over two years since a memorial sign in Mississippi, commemorating the place where 14-year-old Emmett Till’s tortured body was pulled from the Tallahatchie river back in August of 1955, was vandalized. It’s been one year since a marker giving the history of the terrible and inhumane injustice that befell Till was defaced. In June of this year, a new sign was re-dedicated to the spot. On July 26, just five weeks after that, four bullets were shot—piercing the sign once again. Patrick Weems, the co-founder of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center was interviewed by the Washington Post explained the vandalism.
The riverside sign has been a frequent target because of its isolation, Weems thinks. It’s 10 minutes outside town and two miles down a gravel road.
Vandalizing the sign, then, is not some spontaneous act. One has to really want to shoot it, Weems said.
Emmett Till was visiting Mississippi from Chicago in 1955, a month after his fourteenth birthday; and was accused by a lying and horrendous human being named Carolyn Bryant of whistling at her in a sexually suggestive way, while at a local grocery store. She was white, Till was black, and Till disappeared—his body being pulled from the Tallahatchie river days later. An autopsy revealed that he had been tortured and shot. No one was ever prosecuted in his death.
The sign has been stolen once, and now shot on two separate occasions. Anyone vandalizing this sign to supporting not only racism but torture and a true human atrocity and injustice. What happened to Emmett Till is the reason that Moses went to the top of Mount Sinai. What happened to Emmett Till is the why millions of black Americans put their lives on the line every day in the fight for true equality. What happened to Emmett Till is in no small part the reason all of us are here on this site.
The memorial sign reads: This is the site where Till’s body was removed from the river. It was then taken to Greenwood, MS. Then the body was sent back to Money, MS, for burial. Via a phone call from Till’s mother, “not to bury her son”, the body was then taken back to Greenwood. The body was then sent to Tutwiler, MS, for final preparation to be sent to Chicago, IL.