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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
Announcements
Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
To purchase your 2008 calendar, learn more about the KAMMCARES Foundation, or to be featured in the 2009 calendar, please visit Men of Mortuaries.
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Body to Be Exhumed in 1955 Racial Killing |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Wednesday, 04 May 2005 |
Body of Emmett Till, Black Youth Whose 1955 Death Galvanized Civil Rights Movement, to Be Exhumed
By DON BABWIN
The Associated Press
CHICAGO May 4, 2005 — A half century after the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till shocked a nation and galvanized the civil rights movement, his body will be exhumed as authorities attempt to determine who killed him, the FBI said Wednesday.
Till's body, buried in a cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Alsip, will be exhumed within the next few weeks for an autopsy, said Deborah Madden, spokeswoman for the FBI office in Jackson, Miss.
The Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the Till investigation, citing several pieces of information that included a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.
"The exhumation is a logical continuation of that," Madden said. "An autopsy was never performed on the body and the cause of death was never determined."
Till, who was raised in Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in the tiny Mississippi Delta community of Money on Aug. 28, 1955, reportedly for whistling at a white woman at a grocery store. His mutilated body was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River. It was unrecognizable and his mother was only able to identify the teenager because she recognized a ring on his finger.
In Mississippi, District Attorney Joyce Chiles of Greenville said that she hopes the autopsy will positively identify Till as well as lead to a cause of death.
During a trial that ultimately led to the acquittal of two men on charges they murdered Till, defense attorneys suggested that the body was not Till's and that Till was still alive.
"If there is a prosecution at the end of this investigation then we hope to dispel any notion that Emmett Till was not murdered," Chiles said.
She also said that since an autopsy was never conducted, there is a chance that some evidence, such as a bullet, is still with the remains. Neither she nor Madden knew why an autopsy was never conducted.
The planned exhumation was applauded by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who had urged the Justice Department to re-open the investigation.
"The exhumation of the body of Emmett Till brings the Justice Department investigation to a much higher level," Schumer said in a statement. "In this rare instance, justice delayed will not be justice denied."
The two white men tried for the murder store owner Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman Till purportedly whistled at, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half brother are now deceased. After their acquittal, they confessed in a Look magazine story to beating and shooting Till, saying they killed the teenager because he'd whistled at Bryant's wife.
Beauchamp claimed to have uncovered new evidence in his documentary, "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till."
R. Alexander Acosta, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said the documentary films and new information indicates the two had accomplices who may still be alive.
Though the five-year statute of limitations in effect in 1955 means no federal charges could be brought, Mississippi state charges could still apply, Acosta said.
The Till case gave many Americans a closer look at the segregated South, its Jim Crow laws and lynchings. The boy was killed a little over a year after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed state-sponsored school segregation and about 100 days before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.
Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted that her son's mutilated body be displayed in an open casket at his funeral, forcing the nation to see the brutality directed at blacks in the South at the time. Mobley died in 2003 and is buried next to her son.
The case is not the first civil rights era case to be resurrected decades after the crime was committed. In 2003, Earnest Avants was convicted in the 1966 Ku Klux Klan killing of a 67-year-old handyman who was shot to death possibly to lure Martin Luther King Jr. to the area.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=728641&page=2 |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and say: 'The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay.'” by Robert Frost from 1923 N
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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