If there was ever an inverse example of a Confederate monument, it might be the Lorraine, the Memphis motel where Martin Luther King, the most famous leader of the civil rights movement, was struck down on a balcony. Or maybe it is the 16th Street Baptist Church, the Birmingham, Ala., house of worship where four girls…

A historical marker created in Mississippi to memorialize and educate the public about the 1955 kidnapping and lynching death of 14-year-old Emmett Till was destroyed by vandals who obliterated all visible information about the death that helped galvanize the civil rights movement.