Interior secretary tours civil rights sites in Mississippi

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland says she’s honored to hear from people involved in civil rights in Mississippi. During a tour Tuesday, Haaland saw the rural store that’s part of the history of the 1955 lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till. She also toured the home where state NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963. Haaland traveled with White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory and Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. The Mississippi congressman says he wants the National Park Service to eventually create a civil rights trail to document and preserve significant sites across the South.