A sign located at the site in Mississippi where Emmett Till's body was found 61 years ago has been damaged by what appears to be bullet holes.
WJTV-TV reports (http://bit.ly/2ev01Yq) the historical marker in Tallahatchie County has been receiving a lot of attention after Kevin Wilson Jr. posted a picture of the damage on Facebook on Saturday. The sign has more than 40 holes in it currently.
"I'm at the exact site where Emmett Till's body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River 61 years ago. The site marker is filled with bullet holes. Clear evidence that we've still got a long way to go," Wilson wrote in the post.
The Emmett Till Interpretative Project is raising money to get the sign replaced.
Till, a black 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was kidnapped and brutally killed in the Mississippi Delta in 1955 after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman. His murder helped rally the civil rights movement.
The vandalism of the memorial prompted some African-American leaders in Tallahatchie County to consider that work toward racial tolerance isn't done.
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"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.
He and Johnny B. Thomas, the African-American mayor of Glendora, Mississippi, said they will work to make sure the memorial is rebuilt.
Information from the Associated Press and ABC News was used in this report.
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