Congress pushing to crack unsolved civil rights crimes

William Kelly · August 19, 2007

Emmett Till* - (Sep 7 2005 topic post)
]Thanks again for these links John.

Has the Emmett Till Bill passed the Senate yet?

I don't think so.

And they went home or on vacation until after Labor Day - Sept. 4.

I could be wrong, perhaps the Senate passed it before they took off and I just missed it.

BK

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...;hl=emmett+till

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Alvin Sykes came late to the saga of Emmett Till, but the Kansas City human rights activist has as much as anyone to do with the reopening of the investigation into the 1955 murder.

Without Sykes' persistence and network of connections, it's unlikely that the case would have gotten the renewed attention of federal and Mississippi authorities, say those who have worked closely with him during a quarter-century-long quest to resolve unpunished civil rights crimes.

"He is tenacious as a bulldog, and he doesn't know the meaning of 'no,'" said Don Burger, a retired racial conflict mediator for the U.S. Justice Department.

Burger, of Waukee, Iowa, joined with Sykes in founding the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, which successfully lobbied the Justice Department to put the FBI back on the hunt in 2004.

Until a few years ago, however, Sykes knew only the basic details of the black 14-year-old's brutal death, which is credited with helping to catalyze the civil rights movement.

Sykes felt the case first tug at him in 1981, after he had persuaded the Justice Department to investigate and successfully prosecute a hate crime for which the perpetrator had been acquitted in a Missouri state court.

The victim was Steven Harvey, a 27-year-old black jazz saxophonist, who was beaten to death in 1980 with a baseball bat by a white ex-Marine. Harvey's widow, Rhea, told Sykes it was the second hate crime in her family. The first was Emmett Till, to whom Rhea Harvey was distantly related.

Till's name, however, didn't attract Sykes' full attention until December 2002, when an article in a black-oriented Kansas City weekly newspaper detailed the books and films being done about the case. He read about Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett's mother, who had been trying since 1956 to get the case reopened. That was also the year Sykes was born.

"Like it was, wow, this woman has spent the equivalent of my lifetime pursuing this one thing," said Sykes.

Sykes contacted Mobley and talked her into chairing the Emmett Till Justice Campaign. Mobley died two days after giving the effort her blessing.

Sykes has made the cause his passion ever since, with help from Burger and others, such as filmmaker Keith Beauchamp. Beauchamp's documentary, "The Untold Story of Emmett Till," contends that there were other people, some still living, who were involved in Till's murder other than the two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who were acquitted by an all-white Tallahatchie County jury.

As with the Steven Harvey murder, Sykes had to persuade the Justice Department that it had jurisdiction to look into the case, even if they would have to rely on state officials to prosecute it. His research turned up two precedents - a federal investigation during the 1970s into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Clinton administration's re-examination in the late 1990s of the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King.

"If it was good enough for Kennedy, and it was good enough for King, it was good enough for Emmett Till," Sykes said.

Sykes is one of the more unlikely characters in the latest chapter of the Till murder and its aftermath.

Sykes was taken at the age of 8 days from his 14-year-old biological mother and placed with a 48-year-old unmarried domestic worker. At 12, he got his first taste of the civil rights movement, snitching on vandals who were setting fires around his Kansas City neighborhood in the aftermath of the King assassination. Fearing in part for his safety, his adoptive mother shipped Sykes off to Boys Town, a home for troubled and neglected children in Nebraska.

At 16, back in Kansas City, Sykes dropped out of school and starting teaching and training himself on the intricacies of the law. Raised Catholic, he became a Buddhist at 18.

He developed a passion for helping crime victims, having himself experienced that sense of helplessness at a young age. When he was 11, Sykes said, he was sexually assaulted twice by a man and woman who lived across the street. They were never charged.

"I did not know there were people you could go to for help," Sykes said.

His grasp of the nuances of civil rights laws is unparalleled, according to Burger, the retired Justice Department mediator.

"He can stand on his own with the most gifted lawyers from Yale and Harvard," Burger said.

Sykes does his work without a vehicle (a visual impairment in one eye keeps him from driving) or much income.

Technically, as president of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, he is supposed to receive a salary of $27,500 a year, but the organization hasn't had the money to pay it.

Sykes believes his biggest contribution to the Till investigation was getting federal and state prosecutors to talk. A pivotal meeting occurred in Oxford in February 2004, where Joyce Chiles, the district attorney for Leflore, Sunflower and Washington counties, agreed to request the Justice Department's help in the investigation. That allowed the FBI not only to get involved but to add the possibility of prosecution to its digging.

"Joyce Chiles made this a real investigation with real consequences," Sykes said.

Sykes' powers of persuasion extends beyond the Till case.

He planted the seed in the mind of Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., to create an office within the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute unsolved murders from the civil rights era.

That legislation has 22 bipartisan co-sponsors, including both of Mississippi's Republican senators, Thad Cochran and Trent Lott. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is one of the lead sponsors in a companion measure that is expected to be introduced in the House next month.

Sykes also came up with the legislation's nickname - the "Till bill."

Sykes said he has no preconceived notions about whether anyone still living collaborated in the murder of Till.

"You will never get from me names of people who were allegedly involved. We want a complete and fair investigation," he said.

He said the evidence could just as likely exonerate aged suspects as it could show reason to prosecute.

"There may be people out there who have been falsely accused."

To those in Mississippi who question the wisdom of resurrecting the racially sensitive case, Sykes cites the example of the June conviction by a Neshoba County jury of Edgar Ray Killen for his involvement in the 1964 slaying of three civil rights workers. That successful state prosecution of the former Klansman has removed, according to Sykes, the stigma that had clung for 41 years to Philadelphia, Miss., site of the infamous crime.

"Already around the world, Philadelphia means something different than it did a month ago," Sykes said during a July interview. "You see it as a beacon of hope for truth and justice."

He said the only way that Mississippi can move out of the long shadow of Emmett Till's death is by bringing to light the full truth of what happened 50 years ago.

"There are more people in Mississippi in the end who will feel better about this coming to a conclusion one way or another rather than to just hang there and fester."

* http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=...04621&rfi=6

# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Rights_Movement

@ https://www.choicesvideo.net/guidebooks/WAV/Heroes1.pdf

POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

@ : "Jim Crow” laws created a legally inferior status in the South for African Americans, who were denied equal justice and social services. In addition, African Americans suffered sporadic and vicious outbreaks of “lynch law” — people would seize suspected criminals (many of them innocent) and murder them, often after terrible tortures. Sometimes the “crime” for which a black person was murdered hardly qualified for that term. Such was the case of Emmett Till. Because he had allegedly insulted a white woman on a summer day in 1955, two white men assumed they had license to kill him. If they thought they would get away with it, they were correct, because they were never convicted. But if they thought Emmett Till would be forgotten, they couldn't have been more wrong.

Medgar Evers, as field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was at the forefront of the movement to get blacks to register to vote. This made him a prime target for segregationists. His murder in 1963 was the first racial killing to garner national attention since the killing of Till eight years before. After his death, an interesting shift in vocabulary signaled an important change in perception. His murder was not referred to as a “lynching,” but a “political assassination**,” a recognition that violence against blacks had become something that had to be taken much more seriously and that it had deep political implications. Had Emmett Till and Medgar Evers met their deaths 50 years earlier, their names would probably have been forgotten. But times were changing in America, and their murders ignited a spirit of protest that would not die."

**Medgar was assassinated, only a few hours after viewing Kennedy's famous mid '63 Civil Rights speech on TV.

RFK flew immediately to Medgar's brother, Charles, side and they became lifelong friends,

Charles was with RFK when he was assassinated.

To his mind JFK, MLK and RFK were all assassinations coming from the same sources.

I understand Charles is still alive.

Emmett Till's coffin was laid in state so people could pay their respects. Because of his injuries his mother was asked to close the coffin. She replied No, "Let them see what they hane done".

A decade later, Jackie was asked to change her blood stained clothing. She echoed Till's mother with No, "Let them see what they have done".

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

Comment; Could Sykes be the man to help relaunch an investigation?

"Sykes' powers of persuasion extends beyond the Till case.

He planted the seed in the mind of Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., to create an office within the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute unsolved murders from the civil rights era."

William Kelly · June 19, 2008

http://www.sunherald.com/278/story/619833.html

45 Years Later, Medgar Evers' Legacy Inspires

By Mary Perez

It was 45 years ago today Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his Jackson home just hours after leaving the Coast, and soon after, President Kennedy gave a televised speech on civil rights.Evers, the field agent for the Mississippi NAACP, was on the Coast a day earlier, planning a wade-in with Dr. Gilbert Mason for June 16, 1963. They hoped the protest would lead to blacks being allowed access to Mississippi's public beaches.

Evers was shot shortly after midnight on June 12 as he got out of his car and dragged himself to the back door of his home, where he died in front of his wife and three children.

"Every year this time," said Robert L. Stepney, who fell quiet before remembering the anniversary of his friend's death. He thinks about Evers, his college roommate for three years, and said, "You don't have many good friends."

The two met at Alcorn State University, where Evers went after serving in an all-black Army regiment in Europe during World War II. Evers was a quarterback on the football team and Stepney was his favorite wide receiver.

"We were like brothers," said Stepney, who moved to Gulfport in the 1960s and was a coach for 36 years. "When he came to the Coast, he would always come and stay with us."

"I was a young child in Columbus, Miss., when I heard about him being killed," said James Crowell, NAACP-Biloxi president.

He believes Barack Obama being a possible presidential nominee "equates to what started with Medgar Evers in those early years."

Evers and Martin Luther King gave their lives for what they believed and Crowell said, "I take my hat off to them. I don't have the threats that they had back in their days."

Just a week before Evers was killed, a firebomb was tossed into the carport of his home. On June 11, Dr. Felix Dunn of Gulfport called Evers to warn him he was in danger.

"They all knew they were in danger," said Gulfport attorney Felicia Dunn-Burkes, daughter of Dr. Dunn, who fought for civil rights on the Coast with Mason.

They would call each other "anytime someone got a credible indication that there was a real and present threat, not just that constant threat that was out there."

Dunn-Burkes said her recollections are from her childhood. Evers was the point person for all the state's NAACP groups, and "he was the voice to the national office."

When her parents went to Jackson to NAACP meetings, she went along. "We were there for all the programs. We were on the beach for all the wade-ins."

She admired Evers' organization skills and his "fabulous recall. He was able to pull facts and pull names and pull resources. He was just beyond fearless. He was so committed and confident in the rightness of what he was doing. He was always at peace. Never worried because he knew he was right."

Stepney said he, Evers and two cars full of students from Alcorn went to register to vote in Decatur around 1947.

An old white man came out and told them, "I don't want to see any of y'all get hurt. Don't try to go in and vote. You don't know these people here."

Evers said the gentleman didn't have to warn them and Stepney said the man probably saved their lives.

"I introduced him to his wife," Myrlie Beasley, said Stepney, who along with his wife were godparents to their three children.

It would be five years after Evers' death, in 1968, that the Mississippi beaches were legally open to blacks, and the schools weren't desegregated until the 1970s, said Dunn-Burkes.

Evers' killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was convicted of his murder more than 30 years later in 1994 after Evers' body was exhumed and the bullet tied the suspect to the murder.

A Mississippi Civil Rights Museum will be built at Tougaloo College near Jackson.

Moss Point Mayor Xavier Bishop, who served on the site selection committee, said Evers' slaying had a profound effect and underscored the violent nature of the civil rights movement.

"I think it will help to capture in very concise detail the movement and the story that is told here in Mississippi," Bishop said.

William Kelly · June 19, 2008