emmett till before after.jpgEmmett Till is an important historical figure. It was photos of his disfigured, murdered 14-year-old body in Jet magazine that launched the civil rights movement in 1955. Pro-lifers use that example to explain the rationale for showing graphic photos of aborted babies.
That’s the backdrop for this horrible story from the Associated Press, today:

Three gravediggers and a cemetery manager unearthed hundreds of corpses from a historic black cemetery south of Chicago, dumping some in a weeded area and double-stacking others in existing graves, in an elaborate scheme to resell the plots….

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Frantic relatives of the deceased descended on Burr Oak Cemetery – the final resting place of lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington – in hopes someone could tell them their loved ones’ remains were not among the pile of bones that littered a remote area of the property in Alsip, 12 miles south of Chicago….

A visibly shaken Rev. Jesse Jackson voiced the mounting anger at those who would toss the bones of the dead like trash.
“In my judgment, there should be no bail for them, there should be really a special place in hell for these graveyard thieves who have done so much, hurt these families,” he said….

Gotta stop here and wish Jackson et al expressed as much outrage for the aborted “bones of the dead” tossed “like trash.” Continuing the story…
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The suspects, all of whom are black, were identified as Carolyn Towns, 49, Keith Nicks, 45, and Terrence Nicks, 39… and Maurice Dailey, 61…. They each have been charged with one count of dismembering a human body, a felony.
Authorities said Towns also pocketed donations she elicited for an Emmett Till memorial museum. She has not been charged in connection with those allegations….
Towns allegedly took cash for new graves, then instructed the 3 gravediggers to empty existing plots and move the remains inside to an unused part of the cemetery covered with chest-high grass and dotted with trees….

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It’s the second time in recent years that Burr Oak has been at the center of an investigation. In 2005, the body of the 14-year-old Till, whose slaying in 1955 in MS for allegedly whistling at a white woman helped galvanize the civil rights movement, was exhumed as part of a reopened investigation of his death.
[Cook Co. Sheriff Tom] Dart said Till’s grave was not disturbed in the alleged plot-selling scheme….

View a 14:30 PBS documentary on Till’s murder below.
[Photo attribution top Burr Oak photo: AP; bottom 2 Burr Oak photos: The Daily Voice]

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