Mississippi Civil Rights Marker Returning After Damage Fixed

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A civil rights marker in Mississippi has been repaired and will be put back in place, weeks after being vandalized.

The marker commemorates black teenager Emmett Till, who was kidnapped and lynched in 1955 after whistling at a white woman working in a rural grocery store.

The slaying galvanized 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.

The marker was put up in 2011 outside the store in Money.

Someone scratched the sign with a blunt tool in May. Tourists noticed in June that vinyl panels with photographs and text were peeled off the metal marker.

The state paid about $500 for repairs and the marker will be dedicated Tuesday, which would have been Till's 76th birthday.

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