President Bush signed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act this Tuesday after the Senate unanimously passed the measure last week.   Senator Cochran, an original cosponsor of the bill, praised its passage.  Read the article below for more details.

Bush signs Till measure to create special unit
Jerry Mitchell • jmitchell@clarionledger.com • October 8, 2008

President Bush signed a bill into law Tuesday that would create a cold-cases unit to prosecute unpunished crimes from the civil rights era.

The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act will give the Justice Department $10 million a year to examine civil rights killings from before 1970 and $3.5 million to help local law enforcement conducting such investigations.

“We’re happy the president has now made the Till bill the law of the land,” said Alvin Sykes of Kansas City, architect of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act. “These perpetrators will now be the subject of the most comprehensive criminal manhunt in this country’s history.”

The bill is named after Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago who was beaten and killed Aug. 28, 1955, after he reportedly wolf-whistled at a white woman in Money. An all-white jury in Tallahatchie County acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who went on to confess their involvement to Look magazine.

Click here to read the full article.

An article was published today in the Clarion-Ledger titled “Senate Democrats press for approval of cold-cases bill,” and our campaign thought it was important to let readers know about Senator Cochran’s support for this bill which was not included in the article.  Senator Cochran was an original cosponsor of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act which is a bill that provdies funding for new Justice Department efforts to prosecute old civil rights crimes.  He also helped introduce the bill in the last congress with Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Senator Jim Talent (R-MO). 

Here are a few excerpts from the article with details of the bill:

The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act - named after a black teenager who was slain in Money, Miss., in 1955 - and dozens of other measures have been gathered into a 400-page bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

The bills have little in common. One would fund Washington’s subway system, another would create an electronic database of slavery records and post-Civil War reconstruction efforts. Most were blocked from votes by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., mainly because he wants open debate on the legislation and the opportunity to amend it.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and other Senate Democrats lobbied for the Emmett Till measure at a news conference Wednesday.

The measure would authorize $10 million for the Justice Department to open a new office to investigate cold civil rights cases. The office would cost about $2 million a year to operate.

Click here to read the full article in the Clarion Ledger.