Was the casket found with emmett till the same one in the pictures from 1955?”
Authorities are closing the grounds of a historic black cemetery near Chicago where four employees are accused of digging up bodies to resell plots after more bones were found on the property. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Friday that families can no longer wander through Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip to check loved ones’ graves because more of its 150 acres are now considered a crime scene. Dart says law enforcement and families alike have found more bones while walking around the cemetery, which is the burial place of civil rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till. The suspects are charged with dismembering a human body. Families still will be able file inquires at the cemetery. Dart says he hopes to reopen Burr Oak to visitors in five to seven days. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below. ALSIP, Ill. (AP) _ Hundreds of horrified relatives grappling with guilt and anger wandered around a historic black cemetery near Chicago
The casket seen around the world after Emmett Till was murdered in the 1950s was supposed to be preserved at Burr Oak Cemetery. But on Thursday, authorities found it rusting in a garage. “It is appalling to see the condition in which it has been allowed to decay,” Till’s cousin, Ollie Gordon, said at an afternoon news conference. The discovery was made soon after investigators announced that as many as 300 graves were dug up and the bodies dumped at the historic African-American cemetery so the plots could be resold in a money-making scheme. And with more people crowding the cemetery every day to check on their family plots, that number could rise. Till was a Chicago boy whose lynching in 1955 was a touchstone moment in the American Civil Rights Movement. His body was exhumed in 2005, as part of the investigation into his murder, before being re-buried in the same location. But it wasn’t buried in the same casket — the original was supposed to be preserved for a Till memorial. That di
The remains of lynching victim Emmitt Till are still buried at Burr Oak Cemetery, but it appears, in one way, even Till is among the victims of the scandal engulfing the burial ground. There was supposed to be a memorial set up for Emmitt Till in Burr Oak Cemetery, but the Chicago Sun-Times reports the woman who is among those charged in the cemetery scam allegedly pocketed the money for the memorial. Till’s body was exhumed as part of an investigation four years ago. As is customary, he was re-buried in a new casket and the old casket, the one seen in pictures around the world after his murder, was supposed to be part of the memorial. That casket was reportedly found in the back of a shack of the cemetery with a family of opossums living inside it and old headstones and garbage all around it.
