$20K raised to replace bullet-riddled Emmett Till sign

More than $20,000 has been raised so far to replace a bullet-riddled historical sign for Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager whose 1955 slaying helped propel the civil rights movement — more than 10 times what it will cost to replace the sign.

Since the Emmett Till Memorial Commission put up eight markers in Tallahatchie County in 2008, the sign near Tallahatchie River (where Till’s body was found) has been a repeated target of vandals.

The response has astounded Patrick Weems, director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, where people are making their online donations. “In doing this work for 10 years and now seeing this outpouring from people who want to see Emmett Till’s memory sustained, that is incredible.”

He said the sign will cost between $1,400 and $2,000 to replace.

The extra donations will be used to commemorate Till in other ways, he said. “It’s always been a dream of ours to create a permanent site by the river so people could pray or be mindful.”

He said the Fannie Lou Hamer Park in Ruleville might be an example of what could be done. There has also been talk of a statue.

But repeated vandalism gives them pause, Weems said. “Can we put something out there that’s bullet proof?”

For now, the commission is “brainstorming about what we can do,” he said.

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Over the past decade, civil rights markers and symbols have been repeated targets of vandalism in Mississippi.

“These are easy targets, a low-risk outlet for racism,” said Dave Tell, an associate professor at the University of Kansas who is part of the Emmett Till Memory Project.

Some people mistakenly see “civil rights monuments as a form of reverse discrimination, a threat to their own well-being,” he said.

On Sept. 23, 1955, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted half-brothers Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam of murder in Till’s slaying.

Months later, the two men confessed to Look magazine they had indeed killed Till.

Four days after Rosa Parks heard a speech on Till, she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on Dec. 1, 1955, and refused to give up her seat to a white man.

“The Emmett Till case propelled the civil rights movement,” said Devery Anderson, whose book on the case is now being made into an HBO miniseries being produced by Jay-Z, Will Smith, Casey Affleck and Aaron Kaplan.

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After Emmett Till Memorial Highway was dedicated along a 32-mile stretch of U.S. 49 East in 2006, vandals painted “KKK” on the Emmett Till highway sign.

After the Mississippi historical marker recognizing the Ku Klux Klan’s 1964 killings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner was unveiled in 2009, it became a repeated target, too.

First, vandals painted the sign black. Then they painted “KKK” on the sign. In 2013, they stole the sign.

The sign south of Philadelphia at the intersection of Mississippi 19 and Mississippi 19 South and County Road 515 has since been replaced.

Chaney’s grave south of Meridian has been such a repeated target of vandals that steel frames were installed to keep his headstone from being knocked over or damaged.

In spite of such vandalism, efforts are continuing in Mississippi and across the U.S. to commemorate significant places during the civil rights movement.

The courthouse in Sumner where the killers walked free has since been restored, and in a 2007 ceremony, the community apologized to the Till family.

The Emmett Till Memory Project is a website and smartphone app that lets people visit all the significant places connected to the Till story — 51 in all.

Through the app, people can learn about the varying versions of the story, said Davis Houck, Fannie Lou Hamer professor of rhetorical studies at Florida State University, who is on the project with Tell, Pablo Correa, also of Florida State, and Chris Spielvogel of Penn State University.

Hopes are to expand the app to include primary documents from the Till case, he said. “That way people can connect with the real history.”

Contact Jerry Mitchell at jmitchell@gannett.com or (601) 961-7064. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.