MS Civil Rights Site To Be Restored
The Mississippi Department of Archives and History is providing $152,000 to restore a 1950s gas station in Money as part of the story of Emmett Till – a black 14-year-old from Chicago who was lynched in 1955 for whistling at a white woman.
Ben Roy’s Service Station is next to the site of the woman’s grocery store. Her husband and his half-brother killed and mutilated Till. An all-white jury acquitted them of murder, but they confessed to Look Magazine in 1956.
Architect Dale Riser tells The Greenwood Commonwealth (http://bit.ly/qlcYAb) that the owners would like to get the gas station restored, then move out of the former grocery so it can be restored.
The department also approved $210,000 to restore the courtroom in Sumner where the murder trial was held.
