by Mary Rupert
An effort to pass the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Reauthorization Act of 2016 has moved forward recently, according to Alvin Sykes, a human rights advocate in Kansas City, Kan.
Sykes said the family of Emmett Till last week offered its support for the reauthorization bill.
Till’s family, in a statement by Airickca Gordon-Taylor, Till estate representative, asked Congress and the President to support the Emmett Till bill. They also expressed their appreciation to Sykes for leading this effort.
Sykes, president of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, was a catalyst behind the original Till bill, and is working on the reauthorization bill. The law that went into effect in 2008 allowed federal prosecutors to investigate and prosecute unsolved racially motivated crimes from the civil rights era, pre-1969.
The new bill continues this, and also widens the time period to any year, as well as creating an investigation task force of Department of Justice investigators, state and local law enforcement agencies, civil rights organizations and educational institutions. The bill also calls for transparency and maintaining funding levels.
The Emmett Till bill was named after a Chicago, Ill., teen who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman. The Till case was reopened by federal investigators in 2004. The Till bill allowed federal investigators to become involved in unsolved civil rights cases.
Sykes said U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-3rd Dist., recently signed as one of the bill’s cosponsors.
“I’m very happy that there is a bipartisan, bicameral coalition together this time, like it was last time, in getting it filed, and they were receptive to changes making it a stronger law this time around,” Sykes said.
The first Till civil rights bill had a 10-year sunset provision, set to expire next year, and only dealt with racially motivated cases from 1969 and before, Sykes said.
The new Till bill would be permanent, and time limits will be removed from it, to apply to any racially motivated case, whenever it happens, Sykes said.
“We’re happy about that provision being in there as well as some other factors,” Sykes said.
He said he felt good about its chances of passing.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., are among the leading sponsors of the Till bill, along with Sens. Richard Burr and Patrick Leahy, Sykes said. Reps. John Lewis, James Sensenbrenner and John Conyers are among the leading sponsors in the House. There are more than 40 House cosponsors and nine Senate cosponsors of the bill.
My nephew Devery Anderson wrote the Emmett Till book after several trips to Mississippi to interview people who knew the story and were there at the time it happened. Wonderful book.