Emmett Till’s casket photo

Emmitt Till’s burial at Burr Oak Cemetery appeared to be one of the victims of the scandal engulfing the burial ground. Three men and a woman — Maurice Dailey, 59, Keith Nicks, 45, Terrence Nicks, 39, and Carolyn Towns, 49 — who worked at Chicago’s Burr Oak first black cemetery were charged on Thursday for digging up more than 100 bodies and reselling the plots.

Who is Emmett Till?

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black Chicago boy visiting Mississippi in 1955, was kidnapped from his uncle’s home in the town of Money and killed after he whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, a shopkeeper in the town. Three days later, his mutilated body was found in the muddy Tallahatchie River. He had been beaten and shot. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003, held an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and a photograph of Till’s disfigured face in Jet Magazine had a powerful effect on public opinion. Roy Bryant, Donham’s husband at the time, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury in 1955. The men later confessed in an interview with Look magazine. Both are dead.

Emmett Till’s original casket photo

The FBI reopened the case in 2004 but decided in 2006 not to press charges. The case was turned over to local prosecutors. In February 2007, a grand jury refused to bring any new charges. The district attorney in rural Leflore County had sought a manslaughter charge against Donham, who was suspected of pointing out Till to her husband to punish the boy for what was then a grave offense in the segregated South.

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