New Federal Memorials for Emmett Till

    Today is the anniversary of Emmett Till's birth.

    The Mississippi teen was murdered in 1955.

    President Biden is going to establish three historic sites connected to Till's murder, including one at the site where his body was found in the Tallahatchie River.

    Historic signs at that site have been defaced by vandals, including a 2019 incident in which three college students posed with weapons at the damaged signs. They were members of The Ole Miss chapter of Kappa Alpha, a national fraternity whose “spiritual founder” was Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Civil War general.

     Eventually the older signs were replaced by new ones described as bullet-proof.

The Huffington Post reported at the time:

"It’s unclear if the three students shot the Emmett Till sign themselves, or if the bullet holes were already there. The sign, like other Till memorials across Mississippi, has been a frequent target of white supremacist terror and vandalism."

     It is not clear how the Federal signs being planned by the Biden Administration can be protected from more Mississippi vandalism, but certainly Federal penalties would be harsher that anything Mississippi imposes.
 

UPDATE: Reuters reports: Any future vandalism would be investigated by federal law enforcement rather than local police, according to Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi.

(FULL Reuters story is HERE.)