Scandalous Gravediggers At Emmett Till's Cemetery

Posted: 2009-07-11 08:24:19

Filed Under: Top News

ALSIP, Ill. (AP) — Relatives of people buried in a historic black cemetery south of Chicago have been flocking there to check on the graves of their loved ones.

Three gravediggers and a manager at the Burr Oak Cemetery are accused of unearthing hundreds of corpses in an elaborate scheme to resell burial plots. Authorities say some of the corpses were dumped in a weeded area, while others were double-stacked in existing graves.

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The cemetery is the final resting place of lynching victim Emmett Till, as well as blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington.

Investigators have found Till's original glass-topped casket rusting in a shack at the cemetery. The 14-year-old was killed in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Images of his battered body helped spark the civil rights movement.

When Till was exhumed in 2005 during an investigation of his death, he was reburied in a new casket.

The Cook County Sheriff's office and other authorities planned to discuss their investigation Friday.

From the Chicago Tribune: Isaac and Terry Jackson showed up at the cemetery early Thursday, holding old obituaries of their loved ones, determined to find where they were buried.

The brothers have more than a dozen relatives buried in the cemetery but wanted especially to locate their father, Isaac Peter Jackson, and their grandparents, James and Erin Coleman and Ethel Jackson, whose graves should have been marked with concrete tombstones.

"I feel so violated," said Isaac Jackson, 51. "Do you know how much it costs to bury people? When you don't have insurance, you have to put your money together to have them buried -- then for this to take place."

Like so many African-Americans, the Jackson family began burying their dead at Burr Oak when there was no place else that would accept people of color. They have relatives who have been buried there since the 1940s, Isaac Jackson said.

"This was the most prominent cemetery for African-Americans," said Terry Jackson, 46. "My mom said it used to take three hours to get out here; she came when there weren't no roads. She hated that ride, but there was no place else."

The Jackson brothers said they felt betrayed, especially since the accused are also African-American and should understand the importance their culture places on proper burials. So many blacks are raised to believe in the afterlife, that their souls will reconnect with their bodies.

"Look around," Terry Jackson said. "All you see are black folks. That's because that's all that are buried here. How could they do us like this? This was low, this was low. They had no respect for the dead ... no respect for the living either."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

2008-07-03 20:38:40

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