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Weeks After Being Vandalized, Sign Honoring Emmett Till Rededicated In Special Ceremony

In June, tourists discovered someone had torn off pieces of the sign honoring Emmett Till. (Photo by Katherine Eastburn/The Greenwood Commonwealth for AP)

A historical marker honoring the memory of Emmett Till was rededicated Tuesday, July 25, weeks after it was vandalized and then repaired in Mississippi.

Till, a young Black teen from Chicago, was kidnapped and lynched in 1955 while visiting family in Mississippi after he allegedly whistled at a white woman in a convenience store. His murder helped galvanize the civil rights movement and the fight for racial justice.

The sign was rededicated on what would’ve been Till’s 76th birthday, according to the Associated Press.

“Love has more power than hate,” retired political science professor Leslie Burl McLemore said in her remarks at the special rededication ceremony earlier this week. “The quest for freedom will always move forward, thanks to the good people, Black and white, in Mississippi — in spite of what has happened.”

“People who persist in love, freedom and good will prevail in the long term,” McLemore added.

The marker is located outside the long-closed Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in rural Money, Miss. where 21-year-old storekeeper Carolyn Bryant claimed Till, 14, whistled at her, the Associated Press reported. Because of her accusations, the young teen was later kidnapped, tortured and killed by Bryant’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother J.W. Milam.

An all-white jury ultimately acquitted the two men in Till’s murder, but Bryant and Milam later confessed to the killing in a paid interview with “Look” magazine in 1957.

“I didn’t intend to kill the n-gger when we went and got him – just whip him and chase him back up yonder,” Milam said. “But what the hell?! He showed me the white gal’s picture and bragged o’ what he’d done to her! I counted pictures of’ three white girls in his pocket book before I burned it. What else could I do? No use lettin’ him get no bigger!”

Till’s mother, Mamie Till, insisted on an open casket funeral for her son to show the world how badly he had been brutalized.

In a novel released by author Timothy Tyson earlier this year, Carolyn Bryant, who now goes by Carolyn Bryant Donham, admitted to lying at trial when she alleged Till had grabbed her and physically assaulted her.

The Associated Press reported that the sign honoring Till was first erected in 2011 as part of a series of state-funded markers at significant civil rights sites known as the Mississippi Freedom Trail. In May, it was discovered that someone had cut a blunt hole into the panel featuring photos and text about the slain teen. Tourists later found that pieces of the vinyl sign had been torn off completely, destroying the information.

This isn’t the first time a sign honoring Till has been vandalized, however. In October 2016, a memorial marking the spot where the 14-year-old’s body was found floating along the Tallahatchie River was defaced with a barrage of bullet holes. 

Repairs for the new sign cost the state about $500, AP reported.

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