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Fla Dem

(23,542 posts)
Fri Jul 26, 2019, 09:57 AM Jul 2019

We Found Photos of Ole Miss Students Posing With Guns in Front of a Shot-Up Emmett Till Memorial.

Pro Publica

We Found Photos of Ole Miss Students Posing With Guns in Front of a Shot-Up Emmett Till Memorial. Now They Face a Possible Civil Rights Investigation.

Three students were suspended from their fraternity house, Kappa Alpha, after we shared an Instagram photo one of the men posted that was taken in front of a sign commemorating the murder of the 14-year-old black youth in 1955.
by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting July 25, 1:35 p.m. EDT

OXFORD, Miss. — Three University of Mississippi students have been suspended from their fraternity house and face possible investigation by the Department of Justice after posing with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign honoring slain civil rights icon Emmett Till.



One of the students posted a photo to his private Instagram account in March showing the trio in front of a roadside plaque commemorating the site where Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. The 14-year-old black youth was tortured and murdered in August 1955. An all-white, all-male jury acquitted two white men accused of the slaying.

The photo, which was obtained by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica, shows an Ole Miss student named Ben LeClere holding a shotgun while standing in front of the bullet-pocked sign. His Kappa Alpha fraternity brother, John Lowe, squats below the sign. A third fraternity member stands on the other side with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. The photo appears to have been taken at night, the scene illuminated by lights from a vehicle.

LeClere posted the picture on Lowe’s birthday on March 1 with the message “one of Memphis’s finest and the worst influence I’ve ever met.”

Neither LeClere nor Lowe responded to repeated attempts to contact them.

It is not clear whether the fraternity students shot the sign or are simply posing before it. The sign is part of a memorial effort by the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, a Mississippi civil rights group, and has been repeatedly vandalized, most recently in August 2018. Till’s death helped propel the modern civil rights movement in America.

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https://www.propublica.org/article/ole-miss-students-pose-with-guns-in-front-of-shot-up-emmett-till-memorial
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We Found Photos of Ole Miss Students Posing With Guns in Front of a Shot-Up Emmett Till Memorial. (Original Post) Fla Dem Jul 2019 OP
Surprise, surprise, surprise Afromania Jul 2019 #1
I so wish these guys could never get a decent job in life because of this. Aristus Jul 2019 #2
"Economic anxieties" strike again... Blue_Tires Jul 2019 #3
Racist frat idiots. SunSeeker Jul 2019 #4
In light of recent events, this should be considered a terror cell NT Ex Lurker Aug 2019 #5
Unfortunately according to this later article, the FBI did not find it criminal or a threat. Fla Dem Aug 2019 #6

Aristus

(66,250 posts)
2. I so wish these guys could never get a decent job in life because of this.
Fri Jul 26, 2019, 10:23 AM
Jul 2019

But they will. They can get well-paying jobs at FOX News or at some right-wing hate-tank.

Getting dropped by a fraternity. Yeah, that's a life-ending tragedy.

To hell with making America great again. I want our country to be kind again...

Fla Dem

(23,542 posts)
6. Unfortunately according to this later article, the FBI did not find it criminal or a threat.
Thu Aug 8, 2019, 05:40 PM
Aug 2019
POLITICS 08/01/2019 02:26 pm ET

Outrage At Ole Miss Over White Students Posing With Bullet-Riddled Emmett Till Sign
“It makes it harder to say it’s not bad,” one recent black graduate said. “To say ‘I’m safe here, Mom, don’t worry.’”

By Christopher Mathias

<<<<SNIP

The university chose to defer its investigation until the FBI made its own determination about the photo. But interim Chancellor Larry Sparks told ProPublica this week that a “lapse in communication” led to the school being unaware that the FBI had concluded its investigation ― which found that the photo didn’t represent a crime or a specific threat.

Sparks said Ole Miss is now investigating the photo, although school spokesman Rod Guajardo said last week that while the image is “offensive,” it does not constitute a violation of the university’s code of conduct. The incident, Guajardo noted to ProPublica, happened off-campus.

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ole-miss-emmett-till-guns-sign_n_5d42fe86e4b0ca604e2e69ed
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