Screenshot via Cultural Leadership Facebook
A historical marker in Mississippi commemorating Emmett Till—a black teenager who was beaten to death in the waning days of the Jim Crow era—has been vandalized just months after another Till monument was shot, the Associated Press reports.The sign displaying pictures and information about Till—who was murdered in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman—was first damaged last May, according to Allan Hammons, whose PR firm constructed it in 2011. Then last week, a group visiting the site noticed that vinyl panels bearing Till's story had been ripped from the back of the metal sign, rendering it unrecognizable. Hammons told the AP repairs would run them at least $500."Who knows what motivates people to do this?" he said. "Vandals have been around since the beginning of time."Just last October, someone reportedly fired dozens of rounds into a sign marking the spot on the Tallahatchie River where Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam—Till's accused murderers—allegedly dumped his body, the Clarion-Ledger reports. And back in 2006, someone scrawled "KKK" across the sign that designates a long stretch of Mississippi road the "Emmett Till Highway." They're just a few of the many markers along the Mississippi Freedom Trail—established to honor African American history—that have been targeted by vandals over the last decade.After hearing about the desecrated marker, Cultural Leadership—a St. Louis–based youth civil rights nonprofit—sent a bus-load of teenagers down to help fix up the vandalized sign, Huffington Post reports. In a Facebook video the group uploaded Tuesday, the kids paper the sign with photographs of Till and stories of his contribution to the civil rights movement—adding their own words to the cultural monument."You can destroy this marker, but you cannot destroy history," one member wrote. "His death sparked a movement."Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.
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