JOURNEY TO JUSTICE

Another Emmett Till sign attacked — and this time erased

Jerry Mitchell
Mississippi Clarion Ledger

Another Emmett Till historical sign has been vandalized — this time on the state's official Freedom Trail.

The Emmett Till historical sign has been scraped almost completely of text and photographs. It was erected in 2011, the first on the Mississippi Freedom Trail.

The Till sign outside the former Bryant grocery was the first erected on the Mississippi Freedom Trail by state tourism officials in 2011. It is also the first to be attacked in such a way, with most of the text and photographs scraped off the sign.

“This time, it’s not someone with a shotgun or somebody trying to run over or tear down the sign,” said Davis Houck, a member of the Emmett Till Memory Project. “This time, it’s more sinister because it’s carefully thought out. It’s not a defacing, but an erasing.”

Till has been dead for more than 60 years, but he has never been more alive in the American consciousness, most recently when NBA star LeBron James mentioned the courage of Till’s mother after his own home became the target of a racist attack.

More:Emmett Till relative meets with Sessions to push civil rights law

“Emmett Till has become this stand-in for awful civil rights abuse,” said Houck, Fannie Lou Hamer professor of rhetorical studies at Florida State University.

Allan Hammons, whose Greenwood company has handled the installation and maintenance of the markers, said this is the first time a sign has been attacked like this.

“Was this racially motivated?” he asked. “Who knows? Vandalism has been going on since the beginning of time. Sadly, it’s the nature of the world.”

He said the sign, which cost $8,500 to erect, will be replaced for a cost of less than $500 and that authorities hope to find the perpetrators.

The attack on the Till sign came at the same time as there has been renewed interest in the case.

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 brutally beaten and killed Till after he reportedly wolf-whistled at Bryant’s wife, Carolyn, who now bears the last name Donham.

And now she has admitted that she lied when she testified that Till was guilty of grabbing her — a lie she repeated to the FBI a decade ago.

She admitted her lie to Tim Tyson, author of the book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” saying, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.”

But she never gave a reason in Tyson’s book why she lied.

Before the 1955 trial of her then-husband ended, Donham took the witness stand and testified outside the presence of the Tallahatchie County jury that Till grabbed her, asked for a date and said he had been “with white women before.”

After the FBI reopened the case, FBI agent Dale Killinger spoke to Donham, who divorced Bryant in 1975 and later remarried.

She repeated the story about Till she had previously testified to, telling Killinger that “as soon as he touched me, I started screaming.”

Notes obtained by The Clarion-Ledger reveal that Donham gave a different story when she spoke first to defense lawyers in 1955, saying Till “insulted” her, but mentioned nothing about touching her.

In 2007, a majority-black grand jury in Greenwood declined to indict her in connection with the killing after considering a range of charges that included aiding and abetting murder, manslaughter and accessory after the fact.

Some Till family members, activists and others have recently called for the case to be reexamined in light of her admission.

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 also part of the Emmett Till Memory Project.

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

This latest act of vandalism reveals that these attacks are not "random or harmless acts of juvenile thrill-seeking," he said. "They are, rather, a form of political action that uses public memorials as a proxy for expressing racial attitudes."

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.

Last fall, vandals shot numerous holes in another Till sign, this one marking where his body was recovered in the Tallahatchie River.

Last fall, bullets riddled this historical sign marking where Emmett Till's body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River in 1955.

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.

Patrick Weems, a member of the project, is also the director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, across the street from the courthouse.

As for the bullet-riddled sign, there have been conversations about purchasing the land where the sign is, but so far, no success. There have also been conversations with some national museums about taking the vandalized sign.

So far, crowdfunding is helping to put out new signs designed by a firm that helped develop the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The same funding is also helping redevelop the smartphone app.

The project is sending “Emmett Till Sustainers” magnolia seeds along with soil from Money, where Till was abducted, from Sunflower County, where Till was tortured and apparently killed, and from the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where his body was recovered.

“Once you receive the seed, we ask that you plant it in your community,” the website says. “Out of the soil where evil deeds occurred, we hope to grow a powerful new story with your help.”

When high school students from the St. Louis area on the Cultural Leadership tour spotted the vandalism on Sunday, they decided to replace the missing text with their own.

Dani Gottlieb said she was expecting to witness “flowers growing in Emmett Till’s honor, not a torn-down marker.”

She and other students posted drawings and writings. “You can destroy this marker, but you cannot destroy history,” one wrote. “His death sparked a movement.”

Another penned his gratefulness to Till that his “unknowing sacrifice” helped give African-Americans equal rights, writing, “We are forever grateful.”

Eden Spiva wrote, “It’s not who killed him. It’s what killed him.”

She explained that she put up the quote “because everyone knows the two men killed him and how they got away with murder. It’s a terrible story, but the real focus is the hatred that killed Emmett Till and the other victims.”

For her, the best tribute of all? “Get rid of the hatred.”

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