Till Casket Found Rusting in a Garage

Alsip, Ill. - Hundreds of corpses in a historic black cemetery south of Chicago, where Emmett Till is buried, were unearthed by three gravediggers and a cemetery manager . Some bodies were dumped in a weeded area and others were double-stacked in existing graves, in an elaborate scheme to resell the plots at Burr Oak Cemetery, authorities said Thursday.

The cemetery was the final resting place for 14-year-old lynching victim Till. Although Till's grave wasn't touched, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said, his casket was found rusting in a garage.

Till’s murder in the 1950s, after whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

In 2005, Till’s body was exhumed for an autopsy , as part of an investigation into his death and kidnapping. He was reburied in the same location.

His original casket wasn’t buried with him, but instead was supposed to be preserved for a Till museum.

It wasn’t preserved. Instead, the Sun-Times’ Mary Mitchell reported , the casket was found rusting in a garage. Mitchell writes, “The casket was surrounded by garbage and discarded headstones strewn about like litter.”

Dart confirmed on Good Day Chicago Friday that the casket was found in the garage. He added that when authorities opened Till’s casket, a family of possums came out.

It is not yet known what will happen to Till’s casket.

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