3 Ole Miss Students Suspended from Frat After Posing with Guns in Front of Emmett Till Memorial

Photo: Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting

Three University of Mississippi students have been suspended from their campus fraternity after being accused of posing with guns in front of the riverside memorial of slain civil rights icon Emmett Till, according to theMississippi Center For Investigative Reporting.

The students and Kappa Alpha Fraternity members — two of whom the report identifies as Ben LeClere (who appears to be holding a shotgun) and John Lowe (who allegedly squats below the sign) — posed boldly in front of the memorial that commemorates Till, an African-American boy from Chicago who was murdered at age 14 in 1955, in an Instagram photo.

LeClere and Lowe did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

A copy of a complaint that had been sent to the school was provided to the center, reportedly revealing that LeClere’s photo had “hundreds of ‘likes,’ and no one said a thing.”

Emmett Till.Getty

The complaint reportedly continued, “I cannot tell Ole Miss what to do, I just thought it should be brought to your attention.”

“I was very stunned to see [the photo] had 274 likes,” Mitchell tells PEOPLE. “I found it hard to believe that it would get liked that many times for potentially — I mean you don’t know for sure, but for potentially standing in front of a sign you just shot.”

Mitchell says the photo was taken down on Tuesday, and the Kappa Alpha Fraternity suspended the three members on Wednesday.

“The chapter leadership suspended the men Wednesday after they learned of the photo late Tuesday,” Ole Miss’ Kappa Alpha Order — whichpraises Confederate General Robert E. Lee as its “spiritual founder”on its website — said in a statement to PEOPLE. “This was the strongest discipline they could take at the time. The making of the photo was unrelated to any event or activity of the chapter. The photo is inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable. It does not represent the chapter or Kappa Alpha Order. The chapter looks forward to working with the University on their offer of education, and has contacted the Emmett Till Memorial Commission to determine if and how they would like their assistance in their mission moving forward.”

Upon the release of the fraternity’s statement, university spokesman Rod Guajardo said the school isn’t taking further disciplinary action.

“While the image is offensive, it did not present a violation of university code of conduct,” Guajardo said in a statement provided to PEOPLE. “It occurred off campus and was not part of a university-affiliated event.”

Till’s cousin, Wheeler Parker, tells PEOPLE that he saw the photo of the students, and that he thinks “sometimes young men like to meet the trade or look macho when they do things like that.”

“It’s just so sad that we’re still on these kind of things in America,” Parker, 80, adds. “It makes a statement saying how much work we have to do and that people still really feel that way very strongly, and as a black person you try to make sense of it – you try to make sense of it all. What did we do? It’s because of the color of our skin … you just try to make sense of it.”

Parker says he struggles with understanding all the hate.

“You can’t change the color of your skin,” he says. “Why can’t we just accept people as they are? Being African American, I just think how this started —- what did we do? Did we murder people? What did we do? I want to know. I just need help getting to the origin of this because I just can’t find anything that makes sense.”

“Our signs and ones like them have been stolen, thrown in the river, replaced, shot, replaced again, shot again, defaced with acid and have had KKK spray painted on them,” said the Emmett Till Memorial Commission. “The vandalism has been targeted and it has been persistent. Occasionally, the national news has picked up the story. More often, these acts have gone unnoticed and been the responsibility of our community to maintain.”

Emmett-Till.org

Mitchell tells PEOPLE he was in Mississippi for the June 2018 installation of the third sign.

“I was there and 35 days later, it got shot again,” he says, adding that the third sign was first shot at in July and again in September of that year.

Parker has also been to “one of the unveilings” of the new signs. “I have been to the sign, yes, and again, you just try to make sense of it. I guess that’s the biggest thing,” he tells PEOPLE.

The Memorial Commission is currently working on a fourth and stronger sign that will be designed to combat attacks, according to Mitchell.

Till’s death, the gut-wrenching images from his funeral and the outcome of the trial served as momentous events in the civil rights movement, allowing for more awareness and clarity of the indescribable treatment of African Americans in the south during the time.

source: people.com