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President Barack Obama signed legislation earlier this month that allows the Department of Justice and the FBI to reopen unsolved civil rights crimes. The Emmett Till Civil Rights Crimes Reauthorization Act of 2016, was signed into law on December 16, 2016, and grants the agencies opportunity to pursue crimes committed before 1980. The legislation is an expansion of a previous bill of a similar name signed into law in 2008.
The upgraded bill, dubbed Till Bill 2, will now eliminate the limitations on cases that occurred prior to 1970, creating an avenue for cases that occurred during the height of the Jim Crow Era to be reopened. Groups like Emory University’s Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project and the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University could now receive funding to help solve civil rights cases.
The original bill, named after 14-year-old Emmett Till who was kidnapped and brutally lynched by two white men for whistling at a white woman in 1955.
Over the past 27 years, the reopening of civil rights cold cases has resulted in 24 convictions. The first person to be convicted was Byron De La Beckwith, who was responsible for killing civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963.
