A memorial first installed in 2008 to mark the spot where 14-year-old Emmett Till was recovered from the Tallahatchie River in 1955 has been repeatedly vandalized — shot through with bullet holes. The sign was removed last month after an image surfaced of three white University of Mississippi fraternity brothers posing next to it with guns.

Civil rights tour guide Jessie Jaynes-Diming says it was painful to see.

“It would be the same thing if I had a Bible up there, or if I had the flag up there and you shot it up,” she says.

Jaynes-Diming is part of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, which is trying to preserve sites like this. Till, a black teenager visiting from Chicago, was brutally killed in Mississippi after allegedly violating Jim Crow social norms. The killing propelled the civil rights movement, and his name is still invoked when innocent blood is shed in racial violence. But telling his story in the Mississippi Delta remains fraught.

‘Why Don’t Y'all Let That Die?’ Telling The Emmett Till Story In Mississippi

Photo: Debbie Elliott/NPR
Caption: A bullet-riddled sign that once marked where Emmett Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River is now housed at the Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Miss. The historic marker was taken down after three white fraternity brothers from the University of Mississippi were pictured holding guns next to the sign.