WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department said Monday it is reopening the investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager whose death while visiting Mississippi was an early catalyst for the civil rights movement.
Till was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955. The mutilated body of the 14-year-old from Chicago was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River.
Pictures of the slaying shocked the world. Two white men charged with murder -- Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam -- were acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men have since died.
R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said a recent public television documentary about the killing and other new information brought to the Justice Department's attention suggests that additional people still alive were involved in the killing.
"This brutal murder and grotesque miscarriage of justice outraged a nation and helped galvanize support for the modern American civil rights movement," Acosta said. "We owe it to Emmett Till, and we owe it to ourselves, to see whether after all these years some additional measure of justice remains possible."
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/05/10/civil.rights.killing.ap/index.html
Till was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955. The mutilated body of the 14-year-old from Chicago was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River.
Pictures of the slaying shocked the world. Two white men charged with murder -- Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam -- were acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men have since died.
R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said a recent public television documentary about the killing and other new information brought to the Justice Department's attention suggests that additional people still alive were involved in the killing.
"This brutal murder and grotesque miscarriage of justice outraged a nation and helped galvanize support for the modern American civil rights movement," Acosta said. "We owe it to Emmett Till, and we owe it to ourselves, to see whether after all these years some additional measure of justice remains possible."
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/05/10/civil.rights.killing.ap/index.html