Bullet-Riddled Memorial to Emmett Till Prompts Talk of Still 'So Much Hatred'

http://abcnews.go.com/US/bullet-riddled-memorial-emmett-till-prompts-talk-hatred/story?id=42999193


By MICHAEL EDISON HAYDEN Oct 23, 2016, 2:12 PM ET

Vandals in Mississippi apparently shot up a memorial to Emmett Till, an African-American teen whose murder in 1955 became a touchstone of the civil rights movement.

The defacing of the memorial drew notice Oct. 15, when Facebook user Kevin Wilson Jr. posted an image of the damage to the marker of the site where the 14-year-old Till, accused of whistling at a white woman, was killed.

"I'm at the exact site where Emmett Till's body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River 61 years ago. The site marker is filled with bullet holes. Clear evidence that we've still got a long way to go," Wilson wrote in the post.

Till was a kid from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi when his body was found with a bullet hole in his head, barbed wire wrapped around his neck and a cotton gin fan weighing him down. His mutilated body was sent home to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till Mobley insisted on an open-casket funeral. The shocking image of her son's body heightened calls for racial justice and civil rights.

FULL story at link.