America's Cold Racial Civil War
Vandals in Mississippi apparently shot up a memorial to Emmett Till, an African-American teen whose murder in 1955 became a touchstone of the civil rights movement.
The defacing of the memorial drew notice Oct. 15, when Facebook user Kevin Wilson Jr. posted an image of the damage to the marker of the site where the 14-year-old Till, accused of whistling at a white woman, was killed.
"This child died in 1955 and people still have so much hatred," Robert E. Huddleston, a state representative from the area and member of the local chapter of the NAACP, told ABC News. "Why do they feel the need to keep on killing him again and again?"
Huddleston said this is the second time this particular memorial had been defaced and that the original version of the marker is believed to have been dumped into the river.
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"When I see hatred like this it makes me want to work that much harder to rebuild it, begin healing, and get members of the Caucasian community to join us in that effort to heal," Thomas told ABC News. "When the descendants of those who perpetrated slavery here and Jim Crow laws stand up against this sort of vandalism it means so much more ... When they join in rejecting this we can move forward."
