The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act is an
Act of the United States Congress
An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by the United States Congress. Acts may apply only to individual entities (called private laws), or to the general public ( public laws). For a bill to become an act, the text must pass through both house ...
introduced by
John Lewis
John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
(
GA-5) that allows the reopening of
cold case
A cold case is a crime, or a suspected crime, that has not yet been fully resolved and is not the subject of a current criminal investigation, but for which new information could emerge from new witness testimony, re-examined archives, new or r ...
s of suspected violent crimes committed against African Americans before 1970. The
U.S. House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
passed the legislation on June 20, 2007, by a vote of 422 to 2. The
U.S. Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
passed the legislation on September 24, 2008, by unanimous consent, and President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
signed the bill into law on October 7.
Background
Background to legislation
During the
Jim Crow era, the U.S. experienced a rise in violent crime against Black Americans.
A 2015 study found that almost four thousand lynchings, mostly of Black men, took place in Southern America between 1877 and 1950. This report compiled an increased number of such documented killings, most of which occurred in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. Racially-based crimes followed accusations of criminal activity or behavior considered unacceptable for their racial group.
Origin of the name of the act
Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old Black boy from Chicago. In the summer of 1955, visiting family in Mississippi, Till was accused of whistling at, or flirting with, a young, married White woman in a grocery store. He then was abducted, beaten, mutilated, and shot in the head before his body was weighted down in a nearby river.
Till's murderers were tried but were acquitted by an
all-white jury
Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial ...
. The two men later confessed to killing Till in an interview with ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' magazine. They were never retried or convicted for his murder.
The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, passed in 2008, authorized the federal government to reopen racially-based cold cases, especially from the civil rights era, for further investigation and prosecution.
The legislation was named for Till because his case is a famous example of a racial killing for which no one was successful tried. The bill works towards gathering more information on unsolved cases to uncover answers for family members, and solve cases using new information.
Legislation
The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act was first proposed in 2007 and was passed by Congress and signed by the president in 2008. In the House of Representatives, the original sponsors of the bill were Rep.
John Lewis
John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
(D-Georgia), Rep.
Jim Sensenbrenner, and Rep.
John Conyers (D-Michigan). In the Senate, the effort was led by Sen.
Claire McCaskill
Claire Conner McCaskill (; born July 24, 1953) is an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Missouri from 2007 to 2019 and as State Auditor of Missouri from 1999 to 2007.
McCaskill is a native of Rolla, Missouri. She g ...
(D-Missouri), Sen.
Richard Burr
Richard Mauze Burr (born November 30, 1955) is an American businessman and politician who is the senior United States senator from North Carolina, serving since 2005. A member of the Republican Party, Burr was previously a member of the United S ...
(R-North Carolina), and Sen.
Patrick Leahy
Patrick Joseph Leahy (; born March 31, 1940) is an American politician and attorney who is the senior United States senator from Vermont and serves as the president pro tempore of the United States Senate. A member of the Democratic Party, ...
(D-Vermont).
The bill creates increased collaboration between local or state law enforcement, the FBI, and other elements of the
Department of Justice
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
. Overall, its primary purpose is to authorize investigation and prosecution of cold cases that appear related to civil rights violations. As of its authorization in 2008, the bill could apply to any case of a crime committed before December 31, 1969.
In addition, the bill provides for assisting the families of victims of civil rights crimes.
Success
As a result of new investigations of cold cases from the Civil Rights era, several cases have been closed. As several suspects and witnesses have died in the intervening decades, there has been minimal prosecutions of perpetrators.
As of 2015, only one case had made it to court and resulted in a successful prosecution.
The
U.S. Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
reopened the case of
Jimmie Lee Jackson
Jimmie Lee Jackson (December 16, 1938 – February 26, 1965) was an African American civil rights activist in Marion, Alabama, and a deacon in the Baptist church. On February 18, 1965, while unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting rig ...
, who was fatally shot in Alabama in 1964 by James Fowler, a state police officer. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served six months in prison in 2010, leading to the closing of the case.
Certain legal protections prevent prosecution in various cases. For example, the Fifth Amendment protects Americans from being tried twice on charges for which they have already been found not guilty.
Ex post facto clauses in the
U.S. Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nation ...
prevent individuals from being tried for crimes that were legal when committed, even if they are illegal now. Given the length of time since the events, involved parties can be difficult to locate, or may have passed away, and evidence can be missing or destroyed.
2016 Reauthorization
The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act was reauthorized on December 16, 2016.
The Reauthorization Act contained a number of new provisions intended to increase success of the government's actions.
It aimed to connect the FBI, the Department of Justice, and law enforcement officers to organizations, such as universities or advocacy groups, that had also been investigating cold cases from the Civil Rights era. Other modifications to the bill included changing the time period to which the bill applied (including all cases before December 31, 1979), clarifying the purpose of the bill, urging the Department of Justice to review specific cases, and eliminating the
sunset provision of the original bill, which stated that the bill expired at the end of the 2017
fiscal year
A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ...
.
Related
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Emmett Till
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John Lewis
John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
*
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
References
{{George W. Bush
Acts of the 110th United States Congress
United States federal civil rights legislation
Emmett Till