In 1955, a white woman named Carolyn Bryant Donham falsely accused a black child named Emmett Till of making sexual advances towards her; a group of Mississippi men then kidnapped, tortured and lynched Till, an act that they never faced criminal consequences for.
Till became a civil rights icon, thanks in part to a stomach-churning photo of his mutilated body that ran in The Chicago Defender and Jet. Today, Till is honored with a memorial in Sumner, Mississippi.
Last July, a group of white, racist frat boys from Ole Miss photographed themselves in front of the Till Memorial sign while toting high-powered rifles and posted the picture to social media.
The Till sign is routinely vandalized and has been repeatedly riddled with bullet holes. Earlier this year, it was replaced with a new “bulletproof” version that is under video surveillance.
On Saturday, a group of people bearing banners for the white supremacist group League of the South were recorded making a video at the sign, with one of the racists narrating, “We are all here are the Emmett Till monument that represents the civil rights movement for blacks. What we want to know is where are all of the white people.”
A speaker near the sign played an automatically triggered recording warning the white supremacists that they were being recorded. They ran away.
The Emmett Till Memorial was recently rededicated and made bulletproof after multiple acts of vandalism — including getting riddled with 20 bullet holes.The original sign went up in 2007. A year later, it was stolen and no arrests were made.
When it was replaced, it was shot at. Last year, a third sign was put up at the site, but just over a month later it was vandalized again.
A white supremacist group filmed in front of the Emmett Till sign weeks after it was made bulletproof [Christina Maxouris, Hollie Silverman and Artemis Moshtaghian/CNN]