6918: Digging Through History.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Exclusive: Emmett Till’s casket left to waste at Burr Oak

Cemetery debacle grows worse with discovery of coffin of civil rights icon

By Mary Mitchell, Sun-Times Columnist

Broken. Rusted. Battered. The image of a glass-covered casket with the body of Emmett Till was shown around the world in the 1950s. But on Thursday, as hundreds of African Americans searched frantically for the graves of love ones, the battered casket of Till was rusting in the back of a shack at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip.

The casket was surrounded by garbage and discarded headstones strewn about like litter.

“When we opened it up trying to find what we have, a family of possums ran out,” said Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Cemetery workers had been cooperative and informed law enforcement officials that it was indeed Till’s original casket.

“It sure looks like all of the photos I have ever seen,” Dart said. “This is absolutely horrible.”

In June 2005, Till’s body was exhumed during an investigation of his death. As is customary, he was not reburied in the same casket.

The original casket was supposed to be part of a planned memorial for Till at Burr Oak Cemetery, but the donations for that memorial were allegedly pocketed by a woman who has been charged in this ghoulish scheme.

Till, 14, was kidnapped and murdered after he whistled at a white woman in 1955 in Mississippi. The lynching of the Chicago youth helped spark the civil rights movement. A picture of his severely mutilated face was shown around the world.

His original casket is symbolic of the condition of the battered condition of the cemetery.

Officers raided the cemetery at 4400 W. 127th St. in Alsip on Wednesday morning.

Four people, including Carolyn Towns—the woman who was supposed to set up the Till memorial—were charged with one count of dismemberment of a human body.

The other charged employees were Keith Nicks, 45; Terrence Nicks, 39, and Maurice Dailey, 59.

Throughout the day, Cook County sheriff’s deputies ferried anxious family members to grave sites in buses ordinarily used to take inmates to Cook County Jail.

The landscape in some sections of the cemetery was dotted with orange utility flags that some people mistakenly thought indicated desecrated graves.

But beyond the grassy areas at Burr Oak, hidden by a wall of high weeds and buried under mounds of dirt, is the nightmare that all of these African Americans were praying they were spared.

The Cook County sheriff’s office now estimates that about 300 bodies were dumped in the rear of Burr Oak, in an area that is about the size of three football fields.

Knowing what was out there was a heavy burden etched in the faces of the people who were waiting for answers.

Carolyn Singleton of Chicago sat in a folding chair outside of the cemetery’s office building, where people were lined up seeking information about plot locations.

She had arrived at Burr Oak at 11 a.m. It was about 3 p.m., and she was still clutching No. 379.

Singleton told me she was looking for the grave sites of seven family members: her grandmother, two aunts, two uncles, a cousin, and her fiance’s mother.

“This is like having a funeral all over again,” she said. “My fiance’s family is calling from out of town trying to get information. All this is giving me a headache.”

I have to give Dart credit for the way he has handled this unprecedented catastrophe.
Although the cemetery’s owners said they would attend a news conference at the cemetery, they failed to show. With most of the employees under arrest, the Cook County Sheriff ‘s Department is essentially running the cemetery.

Sheriff’s deputies drove worried families back and forth to sections of the cemetery to look for plots.

Armed detectives took information from distraught people who either could not find their loved one’s grave site or discovered something was amiss.

Other employees with the Cook County sheriff’s office passed out cold bottled water and even emptied garbage containers.

Although the process for locating plots was indeed slow, people were unbelievably patient, and sheriff’s deputies were sensitive.

The Rev. Steve Jones, a chaplain for the sheriff’s office and president of the Baptist Pastors Conference, was one of the people driving distressed survivors to grave sites.

Jones was thankful that Dart advised the clergy about the disaster before going public. He believes that decision helped bring an element of dignity to a situation that could have been chaotic.

“It wouldn’t have been fair to exclude funeral homes or fair to pastors, not to be prepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude,” Jones said.

“The fact is every black person in Chicago has a tie to this cemetery. When they took us to the crime scene, I walked over bones,” he said.

“This whole thing makes the bereavement experience fresh. To even think your loved one’s remains might not be in place… it really breaks my heart.”