Emmet Till memorial riddled with bullet holes in Mississippi
The sign, marking the site where the young black boy’s body was found in 1955 after being brutally murdered, has been vandalised for years
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Your support makes all the difference.The sign marking the spot where the body of murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till was found in the 1950s, spurring the civil rights movement, has been routinely vandalised and is riddled with bullet holes.
Till’s battered body was found near the Tallahatchie River after he was lynched on 28 August 1955 by two white men.
The Chicago teenager had been visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi, and was kidnapped by J W Milam and Roy Bryant three days after he had whistled at Bryant's wife at their grocery store.
They were acquitted by an all-white jury.
The Emmett Till Memorial Commission erected eight signs, including one by the spot where he was found.
Filmmaker Kevin Wilson Jr posted a picture on Facebook of the sign with about 50 bullet holes in it, rendering the wording difficult to read.
"Clear evidence that we’ve still got a long way to go," he wrote.
He also posted a picture of a marker by the site where murderer J W Milam used to live.
"It is preserved and adorned with flowers," he wrote.
The river sign went up almost a decade ago, was ripped down by vandals in 2008 and put up again, and has been riddled with bullets for years, as reported by Slate.
A picture in 2013 showed the sign with about half the number of holes.
The Emmett Till Interpretive Centre has raised more than its $15,000 goal to replace the sign, with fundraising boosted by the increasing awareness.
A memorial in Greenwood, Mississippi, was stolen in 2007.
The Memorial Commission told the New York Daily News that it cannot afford to replace routinely vandalised signs, so it has launched a virtual reality tour app and website, called the Emmett Till Memory Project.
It guides users to 51 sites around the area which played an important role in the murder of Emmett and the trial of Bryant and Milam.
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