Atoning for the Sins of the Past

The gravestone of Emmett Till in the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.
Till was murdered in Mississippi in 1955.
Photograph by Ed Wagner/Chicago Tribune

Emmett Till was murdered 52 years ago. The death of the Chicagoland teenager at the hands of some of the worst examples our species has ever produced while visiting relatives in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 served to highlight for the nation the reality of life for blacks in the deep south, and fueled the civil rights movement.

The crime remains unsolved.

On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed nearly unanimously legislation to create a “Cold Case” squad within the Justice Department to pursue these decades-old murders. The Senate is expected to follow suit in short order. (I wish I could have faith in Justice right now. But alas…)

The legislation passed yesterday was introduced in the Senate during the 109^th congress. The bipartisan bill was cosponsored by former Republican Senator Jim Talent of Missouri and Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

From McClatchy:

Alvin Sykes, a Kansas City civil rights activist, who encouraged Talent to spearhead the effort, called the bill's passage "a good day for justice."

"It's very important to this country that the U.S. Congress says for America that we need to take care of our unfinished business by bringing to the bar of justice any and all perpetrators who still may be alive who were involved in these lynchings so long ago," he said.

The bill is called the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, after a 14-year-old black youth from Chicago who was found murdered in 1955. He'd been visiting relatives in Mississippi and had whistled at a white woman in a grocery store the day of his death. His mutilated body was found later.

The case has never been solved. But public outrage surrounding the murder was one of many incidents that helped trigger the civil rights movement.

"This legislation helps rectify the inequities of the past and provides justice to those it has seemingly forgotten," said Republican Rep. Kenny Hulshof of Missouri, a co-sponsor of the bill. "The passage of time is no reason to deny justice."

The bill designates officials within the civil rights sections of the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate and prosecute unsolved cases that occurred before 1970 and resulted in death.

The convictions of now-old men in recent years for these heinous, all-too-human acts of the past are welcome news to me and I hope that many more of these unsolved crimes are prosecuted and convictions secured. That they have lived free for so long is offense enough. The ones still living must not be allowed to die free.

Justice Delayed, but not Denied

This is what a terrorist looks like.
One variety of that animal, anyway.

Sometimes you just luck out. You walk into a classroom and a professor just blows your hair back and changes your life.

Twenty years ago, I took an upper-division Sociology course called Racism & Discrimination, and the professor who taught it changed me profoundly. In fact, the first person I thought to call when this whole blogging thing started to take off and I started to make a name for myself and get a little notice was Bill Russell, the professor who taught that course. Such was his impact on my life.

When I woke up this morning to the news that Klansman and domestic terrorist James Ford Seale had been convicted of murder and kidnapping in the deaths of two black teenagers forty-three years ago. My first instinct when I heard the news was to call that professor - but it is June. He is not in his office. (♥ email.)

On May 2, 1964 Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were picked up on a country road, beaten, stuffed into the trunk of a car, and driven to a remote backwater of the Mississippi River. They were bound and weighted down, tethered to an engine block, and thrown into the river alive. A crime rooted in evil and hatred. An act only a human would - or could - commit.

Their bodies were discovered weeks later, during the search for Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman who disappeared while registering black voters in Mississippi.

''I'm going to go to that cemetery, that Mount Olive Cemetery, I'm going to tell Charles Moore, `I told you that I see it to the end.''' Thomas Moore, 63, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said after the verdict. “I now feel that Mississippi is my home, Mississippi, you came a long way and I'm so proud the jury spoke.''

Thomas Moore has not lived in Mississippi since joining the Army just a few weeks before his brother disappeared. He served in Vietnam and made the Army his career, serving 30 years. His efforts were instrumental in the successful prosecution of the animal who heinously murdered two young men for the crime of being black in Franklin County Mississippi in 1964.

Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were murdered 43 years, one month and 12 days before justice was served.

Last night, they were finally able to rest in peace.