The Site Of National Headlines: Burr Oak Cemetery by Barek Halfhand

[Aanica]

The Site Of National Headlines: Burr Oak Cemetery

by Barek Halfhand


The Burr Oak Cemetery has been the subject of national headlines on more than one occasion in the last few years ...

 The most recent news story involved allegations of cemetery employees disinterring bodies to sell plots in the already capacity exceeded graveyard and reselling them surreptitiously to unwitting grieving families wanting to bury loved ones in a place steeped with African American history and Chicago heritage often carelessly discarding the remains of those usurped from their graves in the rear of the cemetery near a rubble and dirt pile...in some cases there was such blazon, flagrant disregard for the deceased that apparently very little effort to conceal the remains was even afforded the discarded dead and there was as authorities reported, visible bones at the rear of one of these dirt piles ...

 Investigators also discovered the original casket of Emmett Till in a litter strewn storage shed  that the (former) cemetery manager pledged would be part of a memorial funded by private donations solicited by herself under the pretense of the murdered 14 year old’s pivotal role in the advancement of Civil Rights in the mid 1950's ...

Emmett Till was an African American teen from Chicago visiting his great uncle in the small Delta community of  Money Mississippi during the summer break of 1955 and made the fatal error of insulting a grocery store clerk where he and his cousin stopped in to buy candy and soda ...it is still unclear what precipitated the indignation of this woman, Till’s cousin claims he simply whistled at her as they departed acquiescing to the dare of the other black youths with them that afternoon to flirt with her as a joke ...accounts range from him simply saying “bye baby” after making their candy purchases or him grabbing her hand and asking for a date, to the store clerk’s (Carolyn Bryant) assertion that he used language so vulgar she couldn’t repeat it and behaved in a lewd and lascivious manor throughout the duration of his time in the store ...regardless the punishment certainly did not fit the crime if there even was one ...
 
Allegations are that when the store owner ( Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant) returned from a trip later that week, he was so incensed by his wife’s contention that this insolent black boy would insult his woman with sexual overtures that he decided to reprimand this lad personally ...

The perpetrators of Emmett’s kidnapping, torture, murder and disposal into the August murky depths of the Tallahassee River, barb wire bound to an industrial fan and beaten beyond recognition, are assumed to be Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam, but there is controversy surrounding testimony that others were in the car that drove to the house of Till’s great uncle; Rev Moses Wright...most believe that Carolyn Bryant was present to identify “the talker” ...the original trial acquitted Bryant and Milam and they are protected from retail per “double jeopardy” laws albeit the fact that the they admitted to killing the teen to a journalist in a post trial interview conducted for a substantial sum of money by the magazine for the “exclusive”...

The reopening of the case years later would reveal new testimonies and allegedly suppressed evidence that implicated up to 14 others either present at the kidnapping and or murder, but a 5 year federal statute of limitation relating to Civil rights cases even those involving death greatly hindered the FBI’s involvement in the investigation and restricted it to the potential for prosecution at the Mississippi State level if any federally assisted investigations yielded sufficient evidence to indict additional murder suspects or accompli that are (were) still alive amid the discourse of that latter investigation ...emergent evidence implicated Mrs Bryant and several others as either present or active participants in the kidnapping, torture and or murder, concealment of a homicide, harboring a fugitive, obstruction of justice and the list goes on and on ...Law enforcement agencies, prosecution, defense council and political figures at all levels involved in the 1955 case faced potential new indictments relating to official misconduct amid
rumors ranging from evidence suppression, evidence tampering, witness intimidation, perjury etc...

 No new charges were leveled in the recent investigation as inadmissible circumstantial evidence, deceased or incapacitated suspects/witnesses and assorted legal loopholes still on the books hindered any new charges or revelations in the case...but this was the catalyst for former President George W. Bush signing a new law named “The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act” in to effect back in Oct. Of 2008 that abrogated some of those limitation statues involving murder and further granting federal investigative and prosecutorial entities additional funding, resources and entitlement to reopen and prosecute cold civil rights cases of this nature if the criteria is met to warrant such reexamination ...

 The reopening of the Emmett Till case in 2005 included the exhumation and a second autopsy of his body at the Burr Oak Cemetery and this was the basis for this location first making national headlines ...Emmit was re-interred in another section ( as I found out later ) and his original coffin never restored for the promised memorial but instead housed a family of raccoons in the rear of a dilapidated shack before it’s discovery as a side note to the second in a decade of national headline capturing stories related to Burr Oak that surfaced in 2009 ...
 
 The desecration of a body is considered an unconscionable and despicable act and a felony in some cases...the official charge was dismemberment of a body, a class X felony punishable up to 30 years in prison for the four charged with reselling deeds to occupied plots ...estimates vary from 200 to over 300 plots were resold and the original occupants were either disinterred and unceremoniously dumped in a ravine at the back of the premises or the original casket was pounded down and the newly departed buried on top of it ...either way this abhorrent act of monumental disrespect sparked outrage and transformed the unremarkable appearing cemetery into an FBI cordoned crime scene and yet another media circus ...a long line of relatives grasping any records or documents they could find waited in a single file line into the cemetery office ...there was very little in the way of records kept by previous administrators so consequently local funeral homes and the county records office was inundated with calls and inquiries from relatives unable to locate the graves of loved ones at Burr Oak ...many were so appalled with this abomination that they wept inconsolable in the July heat waiting their turn to consult the assigned interim cemetery management and county officials serving as a liaison between the public, the media and the intermediary management...the Rev Jessie Jackson was on hand to express his dismay over this atrocity and even went as far as to comment that “there is a special place in hell” for people like those accused of this crime”...all four suspects are African American....

 One wonders if there is truly a correlation to elevated spiritual activity and disturbing a corpse ...and if so, is a body that is exhumed for the purpose of forensic examination exempt from such supernatural implications or are these imprecations exclusive to the disrespect of grave desecration ...Kathleen Savio, Drew Peterson's third wife who died in 2004 was exhumed for examination from her resting place at Queen of Heaven in 2007 when authorities began to suspect foul play following the disappearance of his 4th wife Stacy ... I have personal impressions that in the case of Kathleen Savio’s disinterment three years later and perhaps even in the case of Emmett Till 2 months shy of 50 years later, that there may actually be an appeasement of restless spirits that perished unjustly...regardless of the fact that no additional charges were brought about as the result of Till’s long term post posthumous re evaluation, his story created enough attention to motivate President Bush to sign an amendment of the limitation laws pertaining to civil rights and in the case of Kathleen Savio, a precedent was set that was signed as Illinois law passed in 2008, and commonly referred to as the "Drew's Law” that permitted what would have been previously construed as hearsay to be admissible in court under certain circumstances...This seems to elevate these two victims to martyrdom status for the advancement of a greater cause thus letting them ascend or rest peacefully at last or least ...
 
On the other side of the coin the black arts practice of “necromancy” specifically calls for desecration of the dead and the rifling of graves to invoke the spirit of the deceased but the consequences or “corpse bothering” especially on a large scale like that of Burr Oak are often said to be that of supernatural disturbance regardless if the motivation is that of occult ritual, violence or greed ...

Conversations about nearby Bachelor’s Grove with locals has included mention of Burr Oak before and after the most recent debacle on more than one occasion and there has been unsubstantiated reports of gaunt, black tux clad figures lingering near the old gates adjacent to the tri state on-ramp and gawking at Starbucks sipping motorists embarking on their workday in the predawn glow of the expressway lighting overhead ...of course as any of you that has braved the gauntlet of the Chicago toll-way system knows, a phantasmic specter at the onset of any morning commute here will soon be forgotten amid the unbridled chaos and carnage known as “The Morning Rush” no mater how terrifying the supernatural encounter may be ...other claims have been strange lights and a wailing, moaning sound emanating from the cemetery at night that the apartment residents on the east and north end of the grounds maintain has been an ongoing phenomena there for years but again, this is based on second and third hand accounts I have heard over the last few years ...

 The clear blue sky and temperate, breezy upper 70's weather belied the threatening the blaring tornado sirens that echoed throughout the western burbs the previous evening ...my thoughts returned to that late afternoon of the preceding day when the blackened thunder heads and ionized static of lighting flashes intensified as the preternatural glow of purple orange cloud cover gradually resigned to the darker front approaching that heralded it’s arrival with the deafening boom of thunder claps to rival the still wailing sirens ...the hours of torrential downpour that followed was a welcome alternative to the twister that would have undoubtedly tore my house from it’s foundation and dropped it on a witch somewhere in psychedelic midget-land, but I digress ....

 The old gates where reports of a loitering, grimacing apparition appeared to morning commuters was clearly visible as I turned left instead of right on 127th street like I have so many times before en route to Bachelor’s Grove ...I stopped and took a few photos of the current entrance near the front office and an old unoccupied looking house near the east fence and was immediately aware of the dread one of the windowless windows towards the back instilled ...a mail carrier frowned at from his mail-mobile as I was casually making my way back to the open door of my ride because he had to turn the steering wheel a quarter of a turn to go around me and past the open gates  ...
 
I noticed 2 rectangular, above ground style crypts or sarcophagi at the fork in the roads where the first section begins at a point and upon reading the plaques mounted on the front realized that this was the grave of Mamie Till-Mobley along side of her boyfriend and apparent life partner...The internet; in it’s notoriously impeccable accuracy placed Emmit Till’s grave just across the way in the first section but after crisscrossing a grid pattern failed to yield his tomb ...

A gentleman in casual business attire emerged from the office across the street and was sort of heading my general direction so I at first thought he was going to challenge my presence there being the site of so much recent media notoriety and infamy and before he uttered a word I laconically asked him if he knew where Emmit Till’s grave was and if I was in the correct section...he amiably informed me that I was not and he would print me a map of the correct location from the office ...while I waited nearby, I drifted off to the side in the direction of the old house and took a few photos of the front but retreated back towards the office instead of proceeding along the side and back of this vacant structure that was really bothering me because I didn’t want to miss the map the gracious cemetery employee was providing me and this proved to be a prudent decision because he eyed me suspiciously as I rounded the corner to meet him as he exited the office...I thanked him for his generosity and offered the unsolicited explanation that I was writing an article relating to the Emmit Till case as he handed me the print out and headed to the middle of the cemetery and the sections the printed page denoted as the correct location ...

  As 98 percent of the markers at Burr Oak are modest, nondescript ground flush stones, the marker would have been virtually impossible to pinpoint had it not been for the wooden stakes that marked the lots by increments of 5 as a probable result of the recent investigation and the one next to Emmit’s even had his name written on it ( pictured below) ...intermittent puddles of standing water soaked my Puma sneakers despite my hop scotching efforts to the dryer patches closest to the grave and much to my chagrin, several inches of rain water covered the grave itself...

 The familiar photo of the teen in a white button down shirt and black tie that his mother bought him for as part of a suit and dapper looking brimmed hat outfit he wore at a Christmas dinner she hosted in 1954 was affixed to the top of his tombstone...an outfit she really couldn’t afford but wanted him to have so she gave him $100 and he exhibited impeccable taste for a boy that age in selecting that suite...several pennies and nickels were placed on the marker as tokens and albeit the fact that the flash flood onslaught of showers the area experienced the night before overwhelmed even the most contemporary of irrigation engineering strategies and design, it still struck me as sadly ironic that this poor child that was pulled from the Tallahassee River over half a century ago was staring up at me from below a shallow water surface...a still pool of water that was almost like the glass top that covered the original coffin at his funeral in 1955...

 Another example that the warm summer sun that replaced the early AM drenching did not completely extirpate all evidence of earlier inclement weather was that many of the Burr Oak’s interior roadways were partially if not completely flooded...in some places towards the back I estimate the water was close to 3 feet deep and my professional journalistic demeanor was quickly abandoned in favor of diving my jeep through the highest standing water I could find covering a section of paved surface ( being the mature, consummate professional that I am )...as the steam rose from the under carriage and I tuned in the middle of one of the deeper parts of the flash pond for yet another childish, accelerator stomping splash through the Carmel colored rain water, I realized that it was so high it was splashing up over my hood and a glance out the driver’s side window alerted me to the fact the water was a mid door level...realizing this was deeper than most of the off road sludge sloughs I have attempted to date in my beloved, aging Jeep, I slowed down enough to stave off the water flow over the hood but maintained an even speed to prevent a stall in the middle of the corpse-water pond and navigated towards dry higher ground ...the childish compulsion that placed me into this predicament forced me to glance into the rear view side mirror to admire the bubbling wake spreading behind me and for an instance in the spray mist and steam there was a disconsolate looking, pale figure standing in the water glaring at me or in my general direction and when I whipped around to look to the rear it was gone ...

More on the net:

Emmett Till; is the investigation over?:
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/3-17-2006-91327.asp

Burr Oak Cemetery nightmare:
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/07/sheriff-bodies-dug-up-du...


Here are the unedited (compressed) photos my 6/2010 visit (70 total)....b
http://s745.photobucket.com/albums/xx91/MrHalfhandRulz/Burr%20Oak























































































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