Historical Marker Honoring Emmett Till Defaced in Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A civil rights historical marker in Mississippi has been vandalized.

The marker remembers Black teenager Emmett Till, who was kidnapped before being lynched in 1955. The slaying motivated civil rights activists when Till’s mother had an open-casket funeral in Chicago to show how her 14-year-old son had been brutalized.

Allan Hammons, whose public relations firm made the marker, said Monday that someone scratched the marker with a blunt tool in May. During the past week, a tour group discovered vinyl panels had been peeled off the back of the metal marker in Money, Miss. The panels contained photos and writing about Till.

The sign was erected in 2011 for the Mississippi Freedom Trail, a series of state-funded markers at civil rights sites.

A separate Till marker has been repeatedly shot.