Hopefully, Till monuments will survive the test of time

Way down in Amite County in the hamlet of Liberty, adjacent to the “Charlie Gordon Building,” once my grandfather’s law office, is a fine little park remembering county residents who fought in the Civil War.

The monuments there were among the first erected in America to remember those who died in battle and those who survived to live a full life.

Several names of my bloodline relatives are engraved on those structures. Some of them had forebears who helped win this nation’s independence a century earlier. They are hallowed personages in my family tree.

Far up in Tallahatchie County at Graball Landing, along the bank of the river there, and in the part-county seat of Sumner, is an array of evocative and important memorials and monuments to Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose slain body was pulled from that water in summer 1955.

Included is a 1,000-pound statue of Till.  A large crowd witnessed its recent placement. Greenwood Commonwealth newspaper editor Tim Kalich poignantly and correctly wrote that it “can be a reminder of the sins of the past … a beacon of hope for the future.”

Till was brutally murdered at nearby Money by vigilantes in an incident seen as the trigger point for the start of the Civil Rights Movement. His alleged misstep was whistling at a white female country store clerk.

The Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement that followed it a century later represent two cataclysmic American events of monumental historical context and significance. They cannot be exorcized from history.

These two sites on different ends of Mississippi evoke impassioned remembrances of people, places and events — spawning sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.

I’ve never known of any aversion directed at the memorials in Liberty honoring Civil War participants, but it could happen. There's been a rash of Confederate memorial removals in the South lately and Civil War monuments were recently trashed in Vicksburg.

The Till memorials have known nothing but turbulence since the first was erected years ago. Remember, this is Mississippi where racial animosity rears its ugly face so often that most people fail to even flinch when it happens.

A new year has turned. The wheels of another four-year term in state government are grinding at the state capitol. New lineups of local officials are taking shape in courthouses from Iuka to Woodville and from Hernando to Pascagoula — and dozens of other county seats in between.

Considering that, perhaps this would be a good time to reshape attitudes toward these memorials and monuments held dear to the heart and soul of many Mississippians.

I suggest that some among us need to accept the markers for what they represent. If that’s impossible, at least respect the shrines favored by other Mississippians and leave them the hell alone. Deal?

I am mainly referring to the Till dedications in the environs of Tallahatchie and Leflore counties, because they’ve been tarnished before. Nobody is traipsing around Amite County with plans to vandalize the memorials in Liberty. Again, it could happen.

The newest Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley sites are the result of action by the Biden administration in July. They are located in Mississippi where Till was murdered, and in Illinois, where his mother returned his body for public viewing of the violence that happened to her son in this state.

Anyone plotting to desecrate those monuments is putting themselves in for some well-deserved prison time if caught.

Mississippi has never been tough enough on those who have attempted to destroy previous remembrances of Emmett Till, and some others. Thus has entered the federal government.

— Mac Gordon, a retired newspaperman, is a native of McComb. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Here's hoping Emmett Till monuments in MS will survive test of time