Keep Up With Global Black News

Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest updates and events from the leading Afro-Diaspora publisher straight to your inbox.

Avatar photo
BY Mildred Europa Taylor, 7:18am July 27, 2019,

3 white college students who posed with guns in front of Emmett Till memorial face civil rights investigation

Avatar photo
by Mildred Europa Taylor, 7:18am July 27, 2019,
Three white University of Mississippi students Three white University of Mississippi students pose with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign memorializing Emmett Till. Credit: ABC News

Three white University of Mississippi students have been suspended from their fraternity house after posing with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign memorializing Emmett Till, the 14-year-old who was lynched after accusations that he flirted with a white woman.

A photo surfaced this week showing the three young white students from Kappa Alpha fraternity smiling as they held the firearms, including an AR-15–style semiautomatic rifle, in front of the memorial at night.

Till’s memorial, which is located outside Glendora, Mississippi, marks the spot where the African-American boy’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in 1955, after his senseless killing by two white men that would set the growing Civil Rights Movement into motion and cause a rallying cry nationwide.

The photo, which was obtained by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting (MCIR) and ProPublica, shows an Ole Miss student named Ben LeClere holding a shotgun while standing in front of the bullet-riddled sign.

In this Instagram photo, three Ole Miss students posed smiling and toting guns in front of this bullet-riddled Emmett Till memorial sign in Tallahatchie County. Their fraternity has suspended them, and federal authorities are examining the incident.
Three white University of Mississippi students pose with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign memorializing Emmett Till. Pic credit: Clarion Ledger

The other student, John Lowe, squats below the sign. A third fraternity member stands on the other side with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle has not yet been identified. 

It is also not known if the students shot up Till’s memorial or if the sign, which has been vandalized over the years, was already riddled with bullets when they posed for the photo.

The photo was posted to the private Instagram account of LeClere in March, which was Lowe’s birthday, according to MCIR. “One of Memphis’s finest and the worst influence I’ve ever met,” LeClere wrote in the caption. The photo has since been referred to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for further investigation.

The Kappa Alpha, which suspended the three students on Wednesday, said: “The photo is inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. It does not represent our chapter.”

“We have and will continue to be in communication with our national organization and the University,” said Taylor Anderson, president of Ole Miss’ Kappa Alpha Order.

However, the University of Mississippi has not taken any action against the students because the photo did not violate the school’s code of conduct and the incident took place off-campus, Rod Guajardo, a spokesperson for the school, said.

Guajardo explained that an Ole Miss official received a copy of the Instagram picture in March and the university referred the matter to the university police department, which subsequently gave the photo to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

According to Guajardo, the FBI told the police it would not further investigate the incident because the photo did not pose a specific threat.

Image result for emmett till
Emmett Till. Pic credit: The Hill

The photo and its related matters had come at a time when Deborah Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, was already planning a moment of silence Thursday with supporters and friends to honour her cousin of what would have been his 78th birthday, reports Clarion Ledger.

“We are experiencing, I think, an uptick in terms of hatred, violence and people feeling emboldened to take that kind of action.”

“When I think about that photo – it’s a motivator,” Watts told CNN. “It means our work is more important today than it has ever been.”

Since the first Till sign was erected in 2008, it has been vandalized on several occasions. Vandals threw the first sign in the river while the second was blasted with 317 bullets or shotgun pellets before the Emmett Till Memorial Commission officials removed it, according to the Clarion Ledger report.

The third sign, featured in the Instagram image, was damaged by 10 bullet holes before officials took it down last week, the report added. At the moment, a fourth sign – a bulletproof sign – is expected to be installed at the site soon, said the Emmett Till Memorial Commission.

This is not the first time Ole Miss fraternity students have been found in a racial controversy. In 2014, three students from the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house placed a noose around the neck of a statue on campus of James Meredith, the first known black student to attend Ole Miss. 

American history has provided an ongoing narrative of racism and xenophobia enacted by Whites against young Black people as witnessed in the cases of Michael “Mike” Brown, Ezell Ford, Ramarley Graham, Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, among others.

Image result for emmett till
Till’s mother’s decision to leave the casket open at her son’s funeral left the world with the jarring image of her son’s body, which was hardly recognizable. Pic credit: New York Daily News

The murder of Till remains one of the most heinous crimes ever committed. An all-white, all-male jury acquitted two white men accused of the killing.

Last Edited by:Mildred Europa Taylor Updated: July 27, 2019

Conversations

Must Read

Connect with us

Join our Mailing List to Receive Updates

Face2face Africa | Afrobeatz+ | BlackStars

Keep Up With Global Black News and Events

Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest updates and events from the leading Afro-Diaspora publisher straight to your inbox, plus our curated weekly brief with top stories across our platforms.

No, Thank You