Monday, October 24, 2016

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.

Image may contain: outdoorNew 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.”