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    'Why Don't Y'all Let That Die?' Telling The Emmett Till Story In Mississippi

    Emmett Till's 1955 murder propelled the civil rights movement, but telling his story underscores a reluctance for some in Mississippi "to come to grips with its history of racial brutality."
    by Debbie Elliott Aug 28, 2019 5 minutes
    A bullet-riddled sign that once marked where Emmett Till's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River is now housed at the Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Miss. The historic marker was taken down after three white fraternity brothers from the University of Mississippi were pictured holding guns next to the sign.

    A memorial first installed in 2008 to mark the spot where 14-year-old Emmett Till was recovered from the Tallahatchie River in 1955 has been repeatedly vandalized – shot-through with bullet holes. The sign was removed last month after an image surfaced of three white University of Mississippi fraternity brothers posing next to it with guns.

    Civil rights tour guide Jessie Jaynes-Diming says it was painful to see.

    "It would be the same thing if I had a Bible up there, or if I had the flag up there and you shot it up," she says.

    Jaynes-Diming is part of the , which is trying to preserve sites like this. Till, a black teenager visiting from Chicago, was brutally killed in Mississippi after allegedly violating Jim Crow social norms. The murder propelled the civil rights movement, and today his name is still invoked when innocent blood is shed in racial violence.

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