Yesterday was the 54th anniversary of Emmett Till's death when he was only 14 years old. If alive, Emmett would be 68 now. But, he was brutally murdered in 1955, becoming a hero of the American civil rights movement.
During a memorial service in Chicago yesterday, the Till family announced the donation of Emmett's original glass-topped coffin to the Smithsonian Institution. As an important historical artifact, the coffin will be part of the future National Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open on the National Mall in 2015.
Till's original casket (pictured above) was found this summer rusting in a shed, at Burr Oak Cemetery in suburban Chicago, as reported by Ethic Soup.
The glass-top coffin was discovered during an investigation of a grave-reselling scandal, when workers at the cemetery were arrested for digging up graves of more than 300 people and selling their plots.
Chicago-born Till was a 14-year-old who was visiting relatives outside Money, Miss., when he was accused of whistling at a white woman. The woman's husband and his brother pulled Till out of bed in his great uncle's cabin several nights later. His corpse was found in the Tallahatchie River with a 75-pound fan from a cotton gin tied to his neck and a bullet through his head.
Emmett was beaten so viciously that his mother, Mamie, only recognized him by the shape of his ears and his late-father's ring which he wore. Till and his mother are pictured, right, the year that he was murdered.
THE WORLD NEEDED TO SEE
"He was beaten so badly that his brain had to be removed prior to burial," reports the Los Angeles Times.
That's when Mamie Till made her decision that "everyone, and she meant the world, needed to see what had been done to her son." She ordered that the casket be open at his memorial service in Chicago, where some 50,000 people filed through the church to view the body.
Emmett's body rested in the casket in Alsip's Burr Oak Cemetery until 2005. That's when his body was exhumed for an autopsy when the FBI tried to find possible accomplices in the killing. It was the first autopsy since Till's murder 50 years earlier. At that time, four years ago, his body was transferred to another casket and reburied in Burr Oak. The original, historical casket, a symbol of the American civil rights movement, was discarded in the back of a shed to rot and rust.
Hopefully, now that the Smithsonian has acquired the coffin, it will be preserved respectfully and no longer neglected.
TO READ "BURR OAK CEMETERY OPENS AGAIN: RELATIVES ONLY CAN CHECK GRAVES" CLICK HERE.
TO READ "BURR OAK CEMETERY: MAMA WHERE ARE YOU, THEY'VE ROBBED YOUR GRAVE," CLICK HERE.
TO READ "WHERE IS EMMETT TILL'S COFFIN, WHERE ARE THE BABYLAND GRAVES?" CLICK HERE.
CLICK AND READ: "BURR OAK CEMETERY, EMMETT TILL'S BURIAL SITE, TO BE SCANNED UNDERGROUND"
CLICK AND READ: "FAMOUS BURIALS AT CHICAGO'S BURR OAK CEMETERY
by Sharon McEachern
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