There’s a reason that “rest in peace” is written on headstones — you hope that your friends, loved ones and heroes remain undisturbed in death, keeping the dignity they had in life. This is why the case of Burr Oak Cemetery in Illinois is so horrifying.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with this grisly piece of news, four people dug up hundreds of bodies in this cemetery and then dumped them. According to the Chicago Sun-Times (which has been covering the story in-depth, if you’d like to follow it), many of the coffins and headstones were destroyed, and bones were lying all about the mass grave site where the corpses were left.

The story got even sadder today: one of the caskets lying in a shack is the one Emmett Till was originally buried in.

The name Emmett Till should ring a bell for you. My introduction to Till was through the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks. My professor let us read about a mother kissing her dead son and then told us his story.

He was 14 when he was killed. He was black and visiting Mississippi in the 1950s. In May 1955, a black man was shot point blank on his way to vote in Mississippi. In that same month, another black man was shot after he voted. There were witnesses to this one — after all, he was right in front of the courthouse. No one caught their killers, because no one tried to.

In August 1955, teenage Emmett went into a grocery store. What happened next may never entirely be clear, but he was accused of acting inappropriately with the woman who co-owned the store with her husband.

Her husband was one of the men who beat him that night before shooting him and weighting his body to dump it in the river.

Till’s mother insisted on an open casket at the funeral, despite her son’s maimed body. Photos were taken and published, and the whole nation and much of Europe saw them and became outraged.

An all-white jury acquitted his killers. That was only a little more than 50 years ago — a reminder that some of the most violent racist events in U.S. history aren’t that far behind us.

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EDIT: My original blog post title stated that Emmett Till’s grave was dug up. It was the casket he was originally buried in (replaced after his body was exhumed in 2005) that was found — his grave remains undisturbed. Thanks to Mike W. for the correction.