Many young children and teenagers nowadays partake in acts of harmless flirtations, especially towards adults they find attractive. But imagine a child flirting with someone – and the consequence was death? Unfortunately, this happened to a teenager named Emmett Till, in the 1950s. A memorial has since stood in the place where his body was found; but recently, Till’s memorial has been desecrated, with various gunshots.

Emmett Till was a young 14 year old African-American boy who, despite it being the 1950’s, had high hopes for his future. In 1955, he moved to Mississippi to embrace a life that was much different than his own; however, before he left, he heard many a warning from his mother. “Be careful. Mississippi and Chicago are two very different places.” On August 31, 1955, Emmett Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River, beaten, bruised, disfigured. The young teenager had been lynched.

It was found to be that Till was brutally murdered for a simple reason: flirting with a white woman. Carolyn Bryant supposedly felt so endangered by this harmless act that she let her husband know, who promptly grouped with some friends and kidnapped the young boy. After a long time of torturing Till, they murdered him and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Since then, a memorial has stood in the place where Till was discovered. But recently, Till’s long standing memorial has been disrespectfully ruined; it has been sprayed with gunshots, the words on the memorial unable to be read anymore by curious travelers. The gunshots hint that there were multiple people, using a plethora of firearms. And there’s not a doubt in anybody’s mind that this crime was obviously one of hate.

“I’m just tired,” a junior, who preferred to remain anonymous, said. “It’s annoying, I’ve become numb to it, and I’m tired… [But] I’d rather it be a memorial than another human.”