Sign marking where Emmett Till was murdered riddled with bullet holes

A sign marking the spot where 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered, one of the seminal events that led to the Civil Rights movement, has been riddled with bullets.

New York University film student Kevin Wilson made the discovery while working on a short movie about the Till murder and posted it on his Facebook page where it has been shared more than 13,000 times.

From today's Washington Post:

The sign that marks the spot where Till’s body was discovered has been stolen and vandalized on several occasions since it first went up in 2008, according to the Clarion-Ledger. The Emmett Till Memorial Commission installed eight markers like it around the county, and the sign near the river has seen the most damage.

“These are easy targets, a low-risk outlet for racism,” Dave Tell, an associate professor at the University of Kansas who is part of the Emmett Till Memory Project, told the Clarion-Ledger. Some people, he said, see “civil rights monuments as a form of reverse discrimination, a threat to their own well-being.”