DEFENSE

Emmett Till Memorial to Be Replaced With Bulletproof Sign After Gun Photo

Ole Miss fraternity brothers posed with guns in front of the bullet-riddled marker.

A vandalized Mississippi memorial to civil-rights activist Emmett Till will be replaced by a new bulletproof sign, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission said on Friday. The move comes one day after it was announced that three University of Mississippi students had been suspended from their fraternity for posing with guns in front of the bullet-riddled sign, which marks where murdered 14-year-old Till’s body was found in 1955. One of the students posted the photo to his private Instagram account in March, according to an article by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica. The Emmett Till Memorial Commission said that when they learned about the marker’s state, they decided to remove the 50-pound sign and plan to replace it with a 500-pound reinforced, steel marker. “We’re under no naiveté that this is going to end,” the commission’s executive director, Patrick Weems, told NBC News on Friday. “The manufacturers said that this is a bulletproof sign. We’ll test that theory.”